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+Project Gutenberg's Heroes of the Middle West, by Mary Hartwell Catherwood
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Heroes of the Middle West
+       The French
+
+Author: Mary Hartwell Catherwood
+
+Release Date: May 22, 2008 [EBook #25556]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEROES OF THE MIDDLE WEST ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, David Garcia and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Front Cover.]
+
+
+[Illustration: COUNT FRONTENAC.
+From a Statue at Quebec.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+HEROES OF THE MIDDLE WEST
+
+The French
+
+BY
+
+MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD
+
+
+  GINN AND COMPANY
+
+  BOSTON · NEW YORK · CHICAGO · LONDON
+  ATLANTA · DALLAS · COLUMBUS · SAN FRANCISCO
+
+
+
+
+  Copyright, 1898
+  By MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD
+
+  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
+  317.8
+
+  The Athenĉum Press
+  GINN AND COMPANY · PROPRIETORS · BOSTON · U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+Let any one who thinks it an easy task attempt to cover the French
+discovery and occupation of the middle west, from Marquette and Jolliet
+to the pulling down of the French flag on Fort Chartres, vivifying men,
+and while condensing events, putting a moving picture before the eye.
+Let him prepare this picture for young minds accustomed only to the
+modern aspect of things and demanding a light, sure touch. Let him
+gather his material--as I have done--from Parkman, Shea, Joutel,
+Hennepin, St. Cosme, Monette, Winsor, Roosevelt--from state records,
+and local traditions richer and oftener more reliable than history;
+and let him hang over his theme with brooding affection, moulding and
+remoulding its forms. He will find the task he so lightly set himself
+a terribly hard and exhausting one, and will appreciate as he never
+before appreciated the labors of those who work in historic fields.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                              PAGE
+
+    I. The Discoverers of the Upper Mississippi                  1
+
+   II. Bearers of the Calumet                                   19
+
+  III. The Man with the Copper Hand                             44
+
+   IV. The Undespairing Norman                                  71
+
+    V. French Settlements                                      102
+
+   VI. The Last Great Indian                                   117
+
+
+
+
+HEROES OF THE MIDDLE WEST.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+THE DISCOVERERS OF THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI.
+
+
+The 17th of May, 1673, Father Jacques Marquette, the missionary priest
+of St. Ignace, on what is now called the north shore of Michigan, and
+Louis Jolliet, a trader from Montreal, set out on a journey together.
+
+Huron and Ottawa Indians, with the priest left in charge of them, stood
+on the beach to see Marquette embark,--the water running up to their
+feet and receding with the everlasting wash of the straits. Behind them
+the shore line of St. Ignace was bent like a long bow. Northward, beyond
+the end of the bow, a rock rose in the air as tall as a castle. But very
+humble was the small mission station which Father Marquette had founded
+when driven with his flock from his post on the Upper Lakes by the
+Iroquois. A chapel of strong cedar posts covered with bark, his own
+hut, and the lodges of his people were all surrounded by pointed
+palisades. Opposite St. Ignace, across a league or so of water, rose
+the turtle-shaped back of Michilimackinac Island, venerated by the
+tribes, in spite of their religious teaching, as a home of mysterious
+giant fairies who made gurgling noises in the rocks along the beach or
+floated vast and cloud-like through high pine forests. The evergreens
+on Michilimackinac showed as if newborn through the haze of undefined
+deciduous trees, for it was May weather, which means that the northern
+world had not yet leaped into sudden and glorious summer. Though the
+straits glittered under a cloudless sky, a chill lingered in the wind,
+and only the basking stone ledges reflected warmth. The clear elastic
+air was such a perfect medium of sight that it allowed the eye to
+distinguish open beach rims from massed forests two or three leagues
+away on the south shore, and seemed to bring within stone's throw those
+nearer islands now called Round and Bois Blanc.
+
+It must have wrung Marquette's heart to leave this region, which has
+an irresistible charm for all who come within its horizon. But he had
+long desired to undertake this journey for a double purpose. He wanted
+to carry his religion as far as possible among strange tribes, and he
+wanted to find and explore that great river of the west, about which
+adventurers in the New World heard so much, but which none had seen.
+
+[Illustration: Totem of the Illinois.]
+
+A century earlier, its channel southward had really been taken
+possession of by the Spaniards, its first discoverers. But they made no
+use of their discovery, and on their maps traced it as an insignificant
+stream. The French did not know whether this river flowed into the Gulf
+of California--which was called the Red Sea--or to the western ocean,
+or through Virginia eastward. Illinois Indians, visiting Marquette's
+mission after the manner of roving tribes, described the father of
+waters and its tributaries. Count Frontenac, the governor of Canada,
+thought the matter of sufficient importance to send Louis Jolliet with
+an outfit to join the missionary in searching for the stream.
+
+The explorers took with them a party of five men. Their canoes, we are
+told, were of birch bark and cedar splints, the ribs being shaped from
+spruce roots. Covered with the pitch of yellow pine, and light enough
+to be carried on the shoulders of four men across portages, these canoes
+yet had toughness equal to any river voyage. They were provisioned with
+smoked meat and Indian corn. Shoved clear of the beach, they shot out
+on the blue water to the dip of paddles. Marquette waved his adieu.
+His Indians, remembering the dangers of that southern country, scarcely
+hoped to see him again. Marquette, though a young man, was of no such
+sturdy build as Jolliet. Among descendants of the Ottawas you may still
+hear the tradition that he had a "white face, and long hair the color
+of the sun" flowing to the shoulders of his black robe.
+
+The watching figures dwindled, as did the palisaded settlement. Hugging
+the shore, the canoes entered Lake Michigan, or, as it was then called,
+the Lake of the Illinois. All the islands behind seemed to meet and
+intermingle and to cover themselves with blue haze as they went down
+on the water. Priest and trader, their skins moist with the breath
+of the lake, each in his own canoe, faced silently the unknown world
+toward which they were venturing. The shaggy coast line bristled with
+evergreens, and though rocky, it was low, unlike the white cliffs of
+Michilimackinac.
+
+Marquette had made a map from the descriptions of the Illinois Indians.
+The canoes were moving westward on the course indicated by his map.
+He was peculiarly gifted as a missionary, for already he spoke six
+Indian languages, and readily adapted himself to any dialect. Marquette,
+the records tell us, came of "an old and honorable family of Laon," in
+northern France. Century after century the Marquettes bore high honors
+in Laon, and their armorial bearings commemorated devotion to the
+king in distress. In our own Revolutionary War it is said that three
+Marquettes fought for us with La Fayette. No young man of his time had
+a pleasanter or easier life offered him at home than Jacques Marquette.
+But he chose to devote himself to missionary labor in the New World,
+and had already helped to found three missions, enduring much hardship.
+Indian half-breeds, at what is now called the "Soo," on St. Mary's
+River, betwixt Lake Huron and Lake Superior, have a tradition that
+Father Marquette and Father Dablon built their missionary station on
+a tiny island of rocks, not more than two canoe lengths from shore, on
+the American side. But men who have written books declare it was on the
+bank below the rapids.
+
+[Illustration: Autograph of Jolliet.]
+
+Jolliet had come of different though not less worthy stock. He was
+Canadian born, the son of a wagon-maker in Quebec; and he had been well
+educated, and possessed an active, adventurous mind. He was dressed for
+this expedition in the tough buckskin hunting suit which frontiersmen
+then wore. But Marquette retained the long black cassock of the priest.
+Their five voyageurs--or trained woodsmen--in more or less stained
+buckskin and caps of fur, sent the canoes shooting over the water with
+scarcely a sound, dipping a paddle now on this side and now on that,
+Indian fashion; Marquette and Jolliet taking turns with them as the
+day progressed. For any man, whether voyageur, priest, or seignior,
+who did not know how to paddle a canoe, if occasion demanded, was at
+sore disadvantage in the New World.
+
+The first day of any journey, before one meets weariness or anxiety and
+disappointment, remains always the freshest in memory. When the sun went
+down, leaving violet shadows on the chill lake, they drew their boats
+on shore; and Pierre Porteret and another Frenchman, named Jacques,
+gathered driftwood to make a fire, while the rest of the crew unpacked
+the cargo. They turned each canoe on its side, propping the ends with
+sticks driven into the ground, thus making canopies like half-roofs to
+shelter them for the night.
+
+"The Sieur Jolliet says it is not always that we may light a camp-fire,"
+said Pierre Porteret to Jacques, as he struck a spark into his tinder
+with the flint and steel which a woodsman carried everywhere.
+
+"He is not likely to have one to-night, even in this safe cove,"
+responded Jacques, kneeling to help, and anxious for supper. "Look now
+at me; I know the Indian way to start a blaze by taking two pieces of
+wood and boring one into the other, rubbing it thus between my palms.
+It is a gift. Not many voyageurs can accomplish that."
+
+"Rub thy two stupid heads together and make a blaze," said another
+hungry man, coming with a kettle of lake water. But the fire soon
+climbed pinkly through surrounding darkness. They drove down two forked
+supports to hold a crosspiece, and hung the kettle to boil their hulled
+corn. Then the fish which had been taken by trolling during the day were
+dressed and broiled on hot coals.
+
+The May starlight was very keen over their heads in a dark blue sky
+which seemed to rise to infinite heights, for the cold northern night
+air swept it of every film. Their first delicious meal was blessed and
+eaten; and stretched in blankets, with their feet to the camp fire, the
+tired explorers rested. They were still on the north shore of what we
+now call the state of Michigan, and their course had been due westward
+by the compass. A cloud of Indian tobacco smoke rose from the lowly roof
+of each canoe, and its odor mingled with the sweet acrid breath of
+burning wood. Jolliet and the voyageurs had learned to use this dried
+brown weed, which all tribes held in great esteem and carried about with
+them in their rovings.
+
+"If true tales be told of the water around the Bay of the Puans," one of
+the voyageurs was heard to say as he stretched himself under the canoe
+allotted to the men, "we may save our salt when we pass that country."
+
+"Have you ever heard, Father," Jolliet inquired of the missionary, "that
+the word Puan meant foul or ill-smelling instead of salty?"
+
+"I know," Marquette answered, "that salt has a vile odor to the Indians.
+They do not use it with their food, preferring to season that instead
+with the sugar they make from the maple tree. Therefore, the bay into
+which we are soon to venture they call the Bay of the Fetid, or
+ill-smelling salty country, on account of saline water thereabout."
+
+"Then why do the Winnebago tribe on this bay allow themselves to be
+called Puans?"
+
+"That has never been explained by the missionaries sent to that post,
+though the name seems to carry no reproach. They are well made and tall
+of stature. I find Wild Oats a stranger name--the Menomonies are Wild
+Oats Indians. Since the gospel has been preached to all these tribes for
+some years past, I trust we may find good Christians among them."
+
+"What else have you learned about the country?"
+
+"Father Dablon told me that the way to the head of that river called
+Fox, up which we must paddle, is as hard as the way to heaven, specially
+the rapids. But when you arrive there it is a natural paradise."
+
+"We have tremendous labor before us," mused Jolliet. "Father, did you
+ever have speech with that Jean Nicollet, who, first of any Frenchman,
+got intimations of the great river?"
+
+"I never saw him."
+
+"There was a man I would have traveled far to see, though he was long a
+renegade among savages, and returned to the settlements only to die."
+
+"Heaven save this expedition from becoming renegade among savages by
+forgetting its highest object!" breathed Marquette.
+
+His companion smiled toward the pleasant fire-light. Jolliet had once
+thought of becoming a priest himself. He venerated this young apostle,
+only half a dozen years his senior. But he was glad to be a free
+adventurer, seeking wealth and honor; not foreseeing that though the
+great island of Anticosti in the Gulf of St. Lawrence would be given
+him for his services, he would die a poor and neglected man.
+
+When, after days of steady progress, the expedition entered the Bay
+of Puans, now called Green Bay, and found the nation of Menomonies or
+Wild Oats Indians, Marquette was as much interested as Jolliet in the
+grain which gave these people their bread. It grew like rice, in marshy
+places, on knotted stalks which appeared above the water in June and
+rose several feet higher. The grain seed was long and slender and
+made plentiful meal. The Indians gathered this volunteer harvest in
+September, when the kernels were so ripe that they dropped readily into
+canoes pushed among the stalks. They were then spread out on lattice
+work and smoked to dry the chaff, which could be trodden loose when the
+whole bulk, tied in a skin bag, was put into a hollow in the ground made
+for that purpose. The Indians pounded their grain to meal and cooked it
+with fat.
+
+The Menomonies tried to prevent Marquette and Jolliet from going
+farther. They said the great river was dangerous, full of frightful
+monsters that swallowed both men and canoes; that there was a roaring
+demon in it who could be heard for leagues; and the heat was so intense
+in those southern countries through which it flowed, that if the
+Frenchmen escaped all other dangers, they must die of that. Marquette
+told them his own life was nothing compared to the good word he wanted
+to carry to those southern tribes, and he laughed at the demon and
+instructed them in his own religion.
+
+The aboriginal tribes, by common instinct, tried from the first to keep
+the white man out of countries which he was determined to overrun and
+possess, regardless of danger.
+
+At the end of a voyage of thirty leagues, or about ninety miles, the
+explorers reached the head of the Bay of Puans, and a region thickly
+settled with Winnebagoes and Pottawotomies between the bay and Winnebago
+Lake, Sacs on Fox River, and Mascoutins, Kickapoos, and Miamis. Fox
+River, which they followed from the head of the bay, and of which the
+lake seemed only an expansion, was a rocky stream. A later traveler has
+told us that Fox River in its further extent is very crooked, and while
+seeming wide, with a boundary of hills on each hand, it affords but a
+slender channel in a marsh full of rushes and wild oats.
+
+The Kickapoos and Mascoutins were rude, coarse-featured Indians. Though
+the missionary exhorted them as seriously as he did their gentler
+neighbors, he could not help remarking to Jolliet that "the Miamis were
+better made, and the two long earlocks which they wore gave them a good
+appearance."
+
+It was the seventh day of June when the explorers arrived in this
+country of cabins woven of rushes; and they did not linger here.
+Frenchmen had never gone farther. They were to enter new lands untrodden
+by the white race. They were in what is now called the state of
+Wisconsin, where "the soil was good," they noted, "producing much corn;
+and the Indians gathered also quantities of plums and grapes." In these
+warmer lands the season progressed rapidly.
+
+Marquette and Jolliet called the chiefs together and told them that
+Jolliet was sent by the governor to find new countries, and Marquette
+had been commissioned of Heaven to preach. Making the chiefs a present,
+without which they would not have received the talk seriously, the
+explorers asked for guides to that tributary which was said to run into
+the great river.
+
+The chiefs responded with the gift of a rush mat for Marquette and
+Jolliet to rest on during their journey, and sent two young Miamis with
+them. If these kindly Indians disliked to set the expedition further on
+its way, they said nothing but very polite things about the hardihood
+of Frenchmen, who could venture with only two canoes, and seven in their
+party, on unknown worlds.
+
+The young Miamis, in a boat of their own, led out the procession the
+tenth morning of June. Taking up paddles, the voyageurs looked back
+at an assembled multitude--perhaps the last kindly natives on their
+perilous way--and at the knoll in the midst of prairies where hospitable
+rush houses stood and would stand until the inmates took them down and
+rolled them up to carry to hunting grounds, and at groves dotting those
+pleasant prairies where guests were abundantly fed.
+
+Three leagues up the marshy and oats-choked Fox River, constantly
+widening to little lakes and receding to a throat of a channel, brought
+the explorers to the portage, or carrying place. The canoes then had
+to be unloaded, and both cargo and boats carried overland to a bend of
+the Miscousing, which was the Indian name for Wisconsin River. "This
+portage," says a traveler who afterwards followed that way, "is half a
+league in length, and half of that is a kind of marsh full of mud." In
+wet seasons the head of Fox River at that time seemed not unlikely to
+find the Wisconsin, for Marquette has set it down in his recital that
+the portage was only twenty-seven hundred paces.
+
+When the two Miamis had helped to carry the goods and had set the French
+on the tributary of the great river, they turned back to their own
+country. Before the men entered the boats Marquette knelt down with
+them on the bank and prayed for the success of the undertaking. It was
+a lovely broad river on which they now embarked, with shining sands
+showing through the clear water, making shallows like tumbling discs
+of brilliant metal,--a river in which the canoes might sometimes run
+aground, but one that deceived the eye pleasantly, with islands all vine
+covered, so when a boat clove a way between two it was a guess how far
+the Wisconsin spread away on each side to shores of a fertile land.
+Oaks, walnuts, whitewood, and thorn trees crowded the banks or fell
+apart, showing prairies rolling to wooded hills. Deer were surprised,
+stretching their delicate necks down to drink at the margin. They looked
+up with shy large eyes at such strange objects moving on their stream,
+and shot off through the brush like red-brown arrows tipped with white.
+The moose planted its forefeet and stared stolidly, its broad horns set
+in defense.
+
+"Sieur Jolliet," said the missionary, once when the canoes drew
+together, "we have now left the waters which flow into the great lakes
+and are discharged through the St. Lawrence past Quebec to the sea.
+We follow those that lead us into strange lands."
+
+"This river Miscousing on which we now are," returned Jolliet, "flows,
+as we see by our compass, to the southwestward. We know it is a branch
+of the great river. I am becoming convinced, Father, that the great
+river cannot discharge itself toward the east, as some have supposed."
+
+The explorers estimated the distance from the country of the Mascoutins
+to the portage to be three leagues, and from the portage to the mouth
+of the Miscousing forty leagues. This distance they covered in a week.
+Drawing their canoes to the shore at night, they pitched camp, varying
+the monotony of their stores with fish and game. Perhaps they had
+learned that wild grapes then budding were not really fit to eat until
+touched by frost. Pierre Porteret said in Marquette's hearing, "the
+Indians could make good wine of grapes and plums if they desired."
+
+The 17th of June, exactly one month from the day on which they had left
+St. Ignace mission, the explorers paddled into a gentle clear river,
+larger than the Miscousing but not yet monstrous in width, which ran
+southward. High hills guarded the right-hand shore, and the left spread
+away in fair meadows. Its current was broken with many little islands,
+like the Miscousing, though on sounding, Jolliet found the water to
+be ten fathoms, or sixty feet, deep. The shores receding, and then
+drawing in, gave unequal and irregular width to the stream. But it was
+unmistakably the great river they had sought, named then as now by the
+Indians, Mississippi, though Marquette at once christened it Conception,
+and another Frenchman who came after him gave it the name of Colbert.
+It was the river of which Nicollet had brought hints from his wanderings
+among northwestern tribes: the great artery of the middle continent, or,
+as that party of explorers believed, of the entire west. Receiving into
+itself tributaries, it rolled, draining a mighty basin, to unknown seas.
+
+The first white men ventured forth upon its upper channel in two birch
+canoes. Five hardy voices raised a shout which was thrown back in an
+echo from the hills; five caps were whirled as high as paddles could
+raise them. But Marquette said, "This is such joy as we cannot express!"
+The men in both canoes silenced themselves while he gave thanks for the
+discovery.
+
+[Illustration: FATHER JACQUES MARQUETTE.
+From a Statue in the Capitol at Washington.]
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+BEARERS OF THE CALUMET.
+
+
+Moving down the Mississippi, league after league, the explorers noted
+first of all its solitude. Wigwam smoke could not be seen on either
+shore. Silence, save the breathing of the river as it rolled on its
+course, seemed to surround and threaten them with ambush. Still, day
+after day, the sweet and awful presence of the wilderness was their only
+company. Once Pierre Porteret dropped his paddle with a yell which was
+tossed about by echoing islands. A thing with a tiger's forehead and a
+wildcat's whiskered snout, holding ears and entire gray and black head
+above the water, swam for the boat. But it dived and disappeared; and
+the other voyageurs felt safe in laughing at him. Not long after,
+Jacques bellowed aloud as he saw a living tree glide under the canoe,
+jarring it from end to end. The voyageurs soon learned to know the huge
+sluggish catfish. They also caught plenty of sturgeon or shovel fish
+when they cast in their nets.
+
+The river descended from its hilly cradle to a country of level
+distances. The explorers, seeing nothing of men, gave more attention to
+birds and animals. Wild turkeys with burnished necks and breasts tempted
+the hunters. The stag uttered far off his whistling call of defiance to
+other stags. And they began to see a shaggy ox, humped, with an enormous
+head and short black horns, and a mane hanging over low-set wicked eyes.
+Its body was covered with curly rough hair. They learned afterwards from
+Indians to call these savage cattle pisikious, or buffaloes. Herds of
+many hundreds grazed together, or, startled, galloped away, like thunder
+rolling along the ground.
+
+The explorers kindled very little fire on shore to cook their meals,
+and they no longer made a camp, but after eating, pushed out and
+anchored, sleeping in their canoes. Every night a sentinel was set to
+guard against surprise. By the 25th of June they had passed through
+sixty leagues of solitude. The whole American continent was thinly
+settled by native tribes, many in name indeed, but of scant numbers.
+The most dreaded savages in the New World were the Iroquois or Five
+Nations, living south of Lake Ontario. Yet they were never able to
+muster more than about twenty-two hundred fighting men.
+
+The canoes were skirting the western bank, driven by the current, when
+one voyageur called to another:
+
+"My scalp for the sight of an Indian!"
+
+"Halt!" the forward paddler answered. "Look to thy scalp, lad, for here
+is the Indian!"
+
+There was no feathered head in ambush, but they saw moccasin prints in
+the low moist margin and a path leading up to the prairie.
+
+Marquette and Jolliet held the boats together while they consulted.
+
+"Do you think it wise to pass by without searching what this may mean,
+Father?"
+
+"No, I do not. We might thus leave enemies behind our backs to cut off
+our return. Some Indian village is near. It would be my counsel to
+approach and offer friendship."
+
+"Shall we take the men?" debated Jolliet. "Two of them at least should
+stay to guard the canoes."
+
+"Let them all stay to guard the canoes. If we go unarmed and unattended,
+we shall not raise suspicion in the savages' minds."
+
+"But we may raise suspicion in our own minds."
+
+Marquette laughed.
+
+"The barbarous people on this unexplored river have us at their mercy,"
+he declared, "We can at best do little to defend ourselves."
+
+"Let us reconnoitre," said Jolliet.
+
+Taking some of the goods which they had brought along for presents,
+Jolliet bade the men wait their return and climbed the bank with the
+missionary. The path led through prairie grass, gay at that season
+with flowers. The delicate buttercup-like sensitive plant shrank from
+their feet in wet places. Neither Frenchman had yet seen the deadly
+rattlesnake of these southern countries, singing as a great fly might
+sing in a web, dart out of its spotted spiral to fasten a death bite
+upon a victim. They walked in silence, dreading only the human beings
+they were going to meet. When they had gone about two leagues, the
+path drew near the wooded bank of a little stream draining into the
+Mississippi which they had scarcely noticed from the canoes. There
+they saw an Indian village, and farther off, up a hill, more groups of
+wigwams. They heard the voices of children, and nobody suspected their
+approach.
+
+Jolliet and Marquette halted. Not knowing how else to announce their
+presence, they shouted together as loud as they could shout. The savages
+ran out of their wigwams and darted about in confusion until they saw
+the two motionless white men. The long black cassock of Marquette had
+instant effect upon them. For their trinkets and a few garments on their
+bodies showed that they had trafficked with Europeans.
+
+Four old Indians, slowly and with ceremony, came out to meet the
+explorers, holding up curious pipes trimmed with many kinds of feathers.
+As soon as they drew near, Marquette called out to them in Algonquin:
+
+"What tribe is this?"
+
+"The Illinois," answered the old man. Being a branch of the great
+Algonquin family, which embraced nearly all northern aboriginal nations,
+with the notable exception of the Iroquois, these people had a dialect
+which the missionary could understand. The name Illinois meant "The
+Men."
+
+Marquette and Jolliet were led to the principal lodge. Outside the door,
+waiting for them, stood another old Indian like a statue of wrinkled
+bronze. For he had stripped himself to do honor to the occasion, and
+held up his hands to screen his face from the sun, making graceful and
+dignified gestures as he greeted the strangers.
+
+"How bright is the sun when you come to see us, O Frenchmen! Our lodges
+are all open to you."
+
+The visitors were then seated in the wigwam, and the pipe, or calumet,
+offered them to smoke, all the Indians crowding around and saying:
+
+[Illustration: Calumet.]
+
+"You do well to visit us, brothers."
+
+Obliged to observe this peace ceremony, Marquette put the pipe to his
+lips, but Jolliet, used to the tobacco weed, puffed with a good will.
+
+The entire village then formed a straggling procession, gazing at the
+Frenchmen, whom they guided farther to the chief's town. He also met
+them standing with a naked retinue at his door, and the calumet was
+again smoked.
+
+The Illinois lodges were shaped like the rounded cover of an emigrant
+wagon, high, and very long, having an opening left along the top for
+the escape of smoke. They were made of rush mats, which the women wove,
+overlapped as shingles on a framework of poles. Rush mats also carpeted
+the ground, except where fires burned in a row along the middle. Each
+fire was used by two families who lived opposite, in stalls made of
+blankets. The ends of the lodge had flaps to shut out the weather, but
+these were left wide open to the summer sun. During visits of ceremony a
+guest stood where he could be seen and heard by all who could crowd into
+the wigwam. But when the Illinois held important councils they made a
+circular inclosure, and built a camp-fire in the center. Many families
+and many fires filled a long wigwam, though Jolliet and Marquette were
+lodged with the chief, who had one for himself and his household.
+
+Whitening embers were sending threads of smoke towards a strip of blue
+sky overhead when the missionary stood up to explain his errand in the
+crowded inclosure, dividing his talk into four parts with presents.
+By the first gift of cloth and beads he told his listeners that the
+Frenchmen were voyaging in peace to visit nations on the river. By the
+second he said:
+
+"I declare to you that God, your Creator, has pity on you, since, when
+you have been so long ignorant of him, he wishes to become known to you.
+I am sent on his behalf with this design. It is for you to acknowledge
+and obey him."
+
+By the third gift they were informed that the chief of the French had
+spread peace and overcome the Iroquois. And the last begged for all the
+information they could give about the sea and intervening nations.
+
+When Marquette sat down, the chief stood up and laid his hand on the
+head of a little slave, prisoner from another tribe.
+
+"I thank you, Blackgown," he said, "and you, Frenchman, for taking so
+much pains to come and visit us. The earth has never been so beautiful,
+nor the sun so bright, as to-day; never has the river been so calm and
+free from rocks, which your canoes removed as they passed! Never has our
+tobacco had so fine a flavor, nor our corn appeared so beautiful as we
+find it to-day. Here is my son. I give him to you that you may know my
+heart. Take pity on us and all our nation. You know the Great Spirit who
+made all: you speak to him and hear him; ask him to give us life and
+health and come and dwell with us."
+
+When the chief had presented his guests with the Indian boy, and again
+offered the calumet, he urged them, with belts and garters of buffalo
+wool, brilliantly dyed, to go no farther down the great river, on
+account of dangers. These compliments being ended, a feast was brought
+in four courses. First came a wooden dish of sagamity or corn-meal
+boiled in water and grease. The chief took a buffalo-horn spoon and fed
+his guests as if they had been little children; three or four spoonfuls
+he put in Marquette's mouth and three or four spoonfuls in Jolliet's.
+Three fish were brought next, and he picked out the bones with his own
+fingers, blew on the food to cool it, and stuffed the explorers with
+all he could make them accept. It was their part to open their mouths
+as young birds do. The third course was that most delicate of Indian
+dishes, a fine dog; but seeing that his guests shrank from this, the
+chief ended the meal with buffalo meat, giving them the fattest parts.
+
+The Illinois were at that time on the west side of the Mississippi,
+because they had been driven from their own country on the Illinois
+River by the Iroquois. The Illinois nation was made up of several united
+tribes: Kaskaskias, Peorias, Kahokias, Tamaroas, and Moingona. Flight
+scattered them, and these were only a few of their villages. They
+afterwards returned to their own land. Their chief wore a scarf or belt
+of fur crossing his left shoulder, encircling his waist and hanging in
+fringe. Arm and leg bands ornamented him, and he also had knee rattles
+of deer hoofs. Paint made of colored clays streaked his face. This
+attractive creature sent the Indian crier around, beating a drum of deer
+hide stretched over a pot, to proclaim the calumet dance in honor of the
+explorers.
+
+Marquette and Jolliet were led out in the prairie to a small grove
+which sheltered the assembly from the afternoon sun. Even the women
+left their maize fields and the beans, melons, and squashes that they
+were cultivating, and old squaws dropped rush braiding, and with
+papooses swarming about their knees, followed. The Illinois were nimble,
+well-formed people, skillful with bow and arrow. They had, moreover,
+some guns among them, obtained from allies who had roved and traded with
+the French. Young braves imitated the gravity of their elders at this
+important ceremony. The Illinois never ate new fruits or bathed at the
+beginning of summer, without first dancing the calumet.
+
+A large gay mat of rushes was spread in the center of the grove, and
+the warrior selected to dance put his god, or manitou--some tiny carven
+image which he carried around his person and to which he prayed--on
+the mat beside a beautiful calumet. Around them he spread his bow and
+arrows, his war club, and stone hatchet. The pipe was made of red rock
+like brilliantly polished marble, hollowed to hold tobacco. A stick
+two feet long, as thick as a cane, formed the stem. For the dance these
+pipes were often decked with gorgeous scarlet, green, and iridescent
+feathers, though white plumes alone made them the symbol of peace, and
+red quills bristled over them for war.
+
+[Illustration: War Club.]
+
+Young squaws and braves who were to sing, sat down on the ground in a
+group near the mat; but the multitude spread in a great circle around
+it. Men of importance before taking their seats on the short grass, each
+in turn lifted the calumet, which was filled, and blew a little smoke
+on the manitou. Then the dancer sprang out, and, with graceful curvings
+in time to the music, seized the pipe and offered it now to the sun and
+now to the earth, made it dance from mouth to mouth along the lines of
+spectators, with all its fluttering plumes spread. The hazy sun shone
+slanting among branches, tracing a network of flickering leaf shadows
+on short grass; and liquid young voices rising and falling chanted,
+
+  "Nanahani, nanahani, nanahani, Naniango!"
+
+
+[Illustration: Stone Hatchet.]
+
+The singers were joined by the Indian drum; and at that another dancer
+sprang into the circle and took the weapons from the mat to fight with
+the principal dancer, who had no defense but the calumet. With measured
+steps and a floating motion of the body the two advanced and attacked,
+parried and retreated, until the man with the pipe drove his enemy from
+the ring. Papooses of a dark brick-red color watched with glistening
+black eyes the last part of the dance, which celebrated victory. The
+names of nations fought, the prisoners taken, and all the trophies
+brought home were paraded by means of the calumet.
+
+The chief presented the dancer with a fine fur robe when he ended; and,
+taking the calumet from his hand, gave it to an old man in the circle.
+This one passed it to the next, and so it went around the huge ring
+until all had held it. Then the chief approached the white men.
+
+"Blackgown," he said, "and you, Frenchman, I give you this peace-pipe
+to be your safeguard wherever you go among the tribes. It shall be
+feathered with white plumes, and displaying it you may march fearlessly
+among enemies. It has power of life and death, and honor is paid to it
+as to a manitou. Blackgown, I give you this calumet in token of peace
+between your governor and the Illinois, and to remind you of your
+promise to come again and instruct us in your religion."
+
+The explorers slept soundly all night in the chief's lodge, feeling as
+safe as among Christian Indians of the north, who stuck thorns in a
+calendar to mark Sundays and holy days. Next morning the chief went with
+several hundred of his people to escort them to their canoes; but it
+was three o'clock in the afternoon before the voyageurs, dropping down
+stream, saw the last of the friendly tribe.
+
+Day after day the boats moved on without meeting other inhabitants.
+Mulberries, persimmons, and hazelnuts were found on the shores. They
+passed the mouth of the Illinois River without knowing its name, or
+that it flowed through lands owned by the tribe that had given them
+the peace-pipe. Farther on, the Mississippi made one of its many bends,
+carrying them awhile directly eastward, and below great rocks like
+castles. As the canoes ran along the foot of this east shore, some of
+the voyageurs cried out. For on the face of the cliff far up were two
+painted monsters in glaring red, green, and black; each as large as a
+calf, with deer horns, blood-colored eyes, tiger beard, a human face,
+and a body covered with scales. Coiled twice around the middle, over the
+head, and passing between the hind legs of each, extended a tail that
+ended like a fish. So startling was this sight, which seemed a banner
+held aloft heralding unseen dangers, that the men felt threatened by a
+demon. But Marquette laughed at them and beckoned for the canoes to be
+brought together.
+
+"What manner of thing is this, Sieur Jolliet?"
+
+"A pair of manitous, evidently. If we had Indians with us, we should see
+them toss a little tobacco out as an offering in passing by."
+
+"I cannot think," said Marquette, "that any Indian has been the
+designer. Good painters in France would find it hard to do as well.
+Besides this, the creatures are so high upon the rock that it was hard
+to get conveniently at them to paint them. And how could such colors be
+mixed in this wilderness?"
+
+"We have seen what pigments and clays the Illinois used in daubing
+themselves. These wild tribes may have among them men with natural skill
+in delineating," said Jolliet.
+
+"I will draw them off," Marquette determined, bringing out the papers on
+which he set down his notes; and while the men stuck their paddles in
+the water to hold the canoes against the current, he made his drawing.
+
+One of the monsters seen by the explorers remained on those rocks until
+the middle of our own century. It was called by the Indians the Piasa.
+More than two centuries of beating winter storms had not effaced the
+brilliant picture when it was quarried away by a stupidly barbarous
+civilization. The town of Alton, in the state of Illinois, is a little
+south of that rock where the Piasa dragons were seen.
+
+As the explorers moved ahead on glassy waters, they looked back, and the
+line of vision changing, they saw that the figures were cut into the
+cliff and painted in hollow relief.
+
+They were still talking about the monsters when they heard the roar of a
+rapid ahead, and the limpid Mississippi turned southward on its course.
+It was as if they had never seen the great river until this instant.
+For a mighty flood, rushing through banks from the west, yellow with
+mud, noisy as a storm, eddying islands of branches, stumps, whole trees,
+took possession of the fair stream they had followed so long. It shot
+across the current of the Mississippi in entering so that the canoes
+danced like eggshells and were dangerously forced to the eastern bank.
+Afterwards they learned that this was the Pekitanoüi, or, as we now call
+it, the Missouri River, which flows into the Mississippi not far above
+the present city of St. Louis; and that by following it to its head
+waters and making a short portage across a prairie, a man might in time
+enter the Red or Vermilion Sea of California.
+
+Having slipped out of the Missouri's reach, the explorers were next
+threatened by a whirlpool among rocks before they reached the mouth of
+Ouaboukigou, the Ohio River. They saw purple, red, and violet earths,
+which ran down in streams of color when wet, and a sand which stained
+their paddles like blood. Tall canes began to feather the shore, and
+mosquitoes tormented them as they pressed on through languors of heat.
+Jolliet and Marquette made awnings of sails which they had brought as a
+help to the paddles. They were floating down the current of the muddy,
+swollen river when they saw Indians with guns on the east shore. The
+voyageurs dropped their paddles and seized their own weapons. Marquette
+stood up and spoke to the Indians in Huron. They made no answer. He held
+up the white calumet. Then they began to beckon, and when the party drew
+to land, they made it clear that they had themselves been frightened
+until they saw the Blackrobe holding the calumet. A long-haired tribe,
+somewhat resembling the Iroquois, but calling themselves Tuscaroras;
+they were rovers, and had axes, hoes, knives, beads, and double glass
+bottles holding gunpowder, for which they had traded with white people
+eastward.
+
+They fed the French with buffalo meat and white plums, and declared it
+was but a ten days' journey to the sea. In this they were mistaken, for
+it was more than a thousand miles to the Gulf of Mexico.
+
+[Illustration: Wampum Girdle.]
+
+To each tribe as he passed, Marquette preached his faith by the belt of
+the prayer. For each he had a wampum girdle to hold while he talked, and
+to leave for a remembrance. His words without a witness would be
+forgotten.
+
+Three hundred miles farther the explorers ventured, and had nearly
+reached the mouth of the Arkansas River, floating on a wide expanse of
+water between lofty woods, when they heard wild yelling on the west
+shore, and saw a crowd of savages pushing out huge wooden canoes to
+surround them. Some swam to seize the Frenchmen, and a war club was
+thrown over their heads. Marquette held up the peace-pipe, but the wild
+young braves in the water paid no attention to it. Arrows were ready
+to fly from all sides, and Marquette held the peace-pipe on high and
+continually prayed. At once old Indians restrained the young ones. In
+their turmoil they had not at first seen the calumet; but two chiefs
+came directly out to bring the strangers ashore.
+
+Not one of the missionary's six languages was understood by these
+Indians. He at last found a man who spoke a little Illinois, and Jolliet
+and he were able to explain their errand. He preached by presents, and
+obtained a guide to the next nation.
+
+On that part of the river where the French came to a halt, the Spanish
+explorer De Soto was said to have died two hundred years before. In this
+region the Indians had never seen snow, and their land yielded three
+crops a year. Their pots and plates were of baked earth, and they kept
+corn in huge gourds, or in baskets woven of cane fibers. They knew
+nothing of beaver skins; their furs were the hides of buffaloes.
+Watermelons grew abundantly in their fields. Though they had large
+wigwams of bark, they wore no clothing, and hung beads from their
+pierced noses and ears.
+
+These Akamsea, or Arkansas Indians showed traits of the Aztecs under
+Spanish dominion; for what is now the state of Texas was then claimed
+by Spain. Marquette and Jolliet held a council. They were certain that
+the great river discharged itself into the Gulf of Mexico. If they
+ventured farther, they might fall into the hands of Spaniards, who would
+imprison them; or they might be killed by fiercer tribes than any yet
+encountered, and in either case their discoveries would be lost. So they
+decided to turn back.
+
+All day the Arkansas feasted them with merciless savage hospitality, and
+it was not polite to refuse food or the attention of rocking. Two stout
+Indians would seize a voyageur between them and rock him back and forth
+for hours. If the motion nauseated him, that was his misfortune.
+
+Pierre Porteret crept out behind one of the bark lodges looking very
+miserable in the fog of early morning. His companion on many a long
+journey, never far out of his shadow, sat down to compare experiences.
+
+"Did they rock thee all night, Pierre?"
+
+"They rocked me all night, Jacques. I can well endure what most men can,
+but this is carrying politeness too far."
+
+"I was not so favored. They would have saved you if they had killed the
+rest of us. And they would have saved the good father, no doubt, since
+the chief came and danced the calumet before him."
+
+"Were these red cradle-rockers intending to make an end of us in the
+night?"
+
+"So the chief says; but he broke up the council, and will set us safely
+on our journey up river to-day."
+
+"I am glad of that," said Pierre. "Father Marquette hath not the
+strength of the Sieur Jolliet for such rude wanderings. These southern
+mists, and torturing insects, and clammy heats, and the bad food have
+worked a great change in him."
+
+"We have been gone but two months from the Mission of St. Ignace," said
+Jacques. "They have the bigness of years."
+
+"And many more months that have the bigness of years will pass before we
+see it again."
+
+They grew more certain of this, when, after toiling up the current
+through malarial nights and sweltering days, the explorers left the
+Mississippi and entered the river Illinois. There, above Peoria Lake,
+another Illinois town of seventy-four lodges was found, and these
+Kaskaskias so clung to the Blackrobe that he promised to come back
+and teach them. From the head waters of the Illinois a portage was
+made to Lake Michigan, and the French returned to the Bay of the Puans
+alongshore. They had traveled over twenty-five hundred miles, and
+accomplished the object of their journey.
+
+Jolliet, with his canoe of voyageurs, his maps and papers, and the young
+Indian boy given him by the Illinois chief, went on to Montreal. His
+canoe was upset in the rapids of Lachine just above Montreal, and he
+lost two men, the Indian boy, his papers, and nearly everything except
+his life. But he was able to report to the governor all that he had seen
+and done.
+
+Marquette lay ill, at the Bay of the Puans, of dysentery, brought on by
+hardship; and he was never well again. Being determined, however, to go
+back and preach to the tribe on the Illinois River, he waited all winter
+and all the next summer to regain his strength. He carefully wrote out
+and sent to Canada the story of his discoveries and labors. In autumn,
+with Pierre Porteret and the voyageur Jacques, he ventured again to the
+Illinois. Once he became so ill they were obliged to stop and build him
+a cabin in the wilderness, at the risk of being snowed in all winter.
+It was not until April that he reached what he called his Mission of the
+Immaculate Conception, on the Illinois River, through snow, and water
+and mud, hunger and misery. He preached until after Easter, when, his
+strength being exhausted, Pierre and Jacques undertook to carry him home
+to the Mission of St. Ignace. Marquette had been two years away from his
+palisaded station on the north shore, and nine years in the New World.
+
+It was the 19th of May, and Pierre and Jacques were paddling their canoe
+along the east side of that great lake known now as Michigan. A creek
+parted the rugged coast, and dipping near its shallow mouth they looked
+anxiously at each other.
+
+"What shall we do?" whispered Jacques.
+
+"We must get on as fast as we can," answered Pierre.
+
+They were gaunt and weather-beaten themselves from two years' tramping
+the wilderness. But their eyes dwelt most piteously on the dying man
+stretched in the bottom of the canoe. His thin fingers held a cross.
+His white face and bright hair rested on a pile of blankets. Pierre and
+Jacques felt that no lovelier, kinder being than this scarcely breathing
+missionary would ever float on the blue water under that blue sky.
+
+He opened his eyes and saw the creek they were slipping past, and a
+pleasant knoll beside it, and whispered:--
+
+"There is the place of my burial."
+
+"But, Father," pleaded Pierre, "it is yet early in the day. We can take
+you farther."
+
+"Carry me ashore here," he whispered again.
+
+So they entered the creek and took him ashore, building a fire and
+sheltering him as well as they could. There a few hours afterward he
+died, the weeping men holding up his cross before him, while he thanked
+the Divine Majesty for letting him die a poor missionary. When he could
+no longer speak, they repeated aloud the prayers he had taught them.
+
+They left him buried on that shore with a large cross standing over his
+grave. Later his Indians removed his bones to the Mission of St. Ignace,
+with a procession of canoes and a priest intoning. They were placed
+under the altar of his own chapel. If you go to St. Ignace, you may see
+a monument now on that spot, and people have believed they traced the
+foundation of the old bark chapel. But the spot where he first lay was
+long venerated.
+
+A great fur trader and pioneer named Gurdon Hubbard made this record
+about the place, which he visited in 1818:--
+
+"We reached Marquette River, about where the town of Ludington now
+stands on the Michigan shore. This was where Father Marquette died,
+about one hundred and forty years before, and we saw the remains of a
+red-cedar cross, erected by his men at the time of his death to mark his
+grave; and though his remains had been removed to the Mission, at Point
+St. Ignace, the cross was held sacred by the voyageurs, who, in passing,
+paid reverence to it, by kneeling and making the sign of the cross. It
+was about three feet above the ground, and in a falling condition. We
+reset it, leaving it out of the ground about two feet, and as I never
+saw it after, I doubt not that it was covered by the drifting sands of
+the following winter, and that no white man ever saw it afterwards."
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+THE MAN WITH THE COPPER HAND.
+
+
+One day at the end of August, when Marquette's bones had lain under
+his chapel altar nearly two years and a half, the first ship ever seen
+upon the lakes was sighted off St. Ignace. Hurons and Ottawas, French
+traders, and coureurs de bois, or wood-rangers, ran out to see the
+huge winged creature scudding betwixt Michilimackinac Island and Round
+Island. She was of about forty-five tons' burden. Five cannon showed
+through her port-holes, and as she came nearer, a carved dragon was seen
+to be her figurehead; she displayed the name Griffin and bore the white
+flag of France. The priest himself felt obliged to receive her company,
+for three Récollet friars, in the gray robe of St. Francis, appeared on
+the deck. But two men, one in a mantle of scarlet and gold, and the
+other in white and gold French uniform, were most watched by all eyes.
+
+[Illustration: THE BUILDING OF THE GRIFFIN.
+From the Original Engraving in Father Hennepin's "Nouvelle Découverte,"
+Amsterdam, 1704.]
+
+The ship fired a salute, and the Indians howled with terror and started
+to run; then turned back to see her drop her sails and her anchor, and
+come up in that deep crescent-shaped bay. She had weathered a hard storm
+in Lake Huron; but the men who handled her ropes were of little interest
+to coureurs de bois on shore, who watched her masters coming to land.
+
+[Illustration: La Salle.]
+
+"It is the Sieur de la Salle in the scarlet mantle," one coureur de bois
+said to another. "And this is the ship he hath been building at Niagara.
+First one hears that creditors have seized his fort of Frontenac, and
+then one beholds him sailing here in state, as though naught on earth
+could daunt him."
+
+"I would like service with him," said the other coureur de bois.
+
+His companion laughed.
+
+"Service with La Salle means the hardest marching and heaviest labor
+a voyageur ever undertook. I have heard he is himself tough as iron. But
+men hereabouts who have been in his service will take to the woods when
+they hear he has arrived; traders that he sent ahead with goods. If he
+gets his hand on them after he finds they have squandered his property,
+it will go hard with them."
+
+"He has a long gray-colored face above his broad shoulders. I have heard
+of this Sieur Robert Cavelier de la Salle ever since he came to the
+province more than ten years ago, but I never saw him before. Is it true
+that Count Frontenac is greatly bound to him?"
+
+"So true that Sieur de la Salle thereby got favor at court. It was at
+court that a prince recommended to him yon swart Italian in white and
+gold that he brought with him on his last voyage from France. Now, there
+is a man known already throughout the colony by reason of his hand."
+
+"Which hand?"
+
+"The right one."
+
+"I see naught ailing that. He wears long gauntlets pulled well over both
+wrists."
+
+"His left hand is on his sword hilt. Doth he not hold the right a little
+stiffly?"
+
+"It is true. The fingers are not bent."
+
+"They never will be bent. It is a hand of copper."
+
+"How can a man with a copper hand be of service in the wilderness?"
+
+The first ranger shrugged. "That I know not. But having been maimed in
+European wars and fitted with a copper hand, he was yet recommended to
+Sieur de la Salle."
+
+"But why hath an Italian the uniform of France?"
+
+"He is a French officer, having been exiled with his father from his own
+country."
+
+The coureur de bois, who had reached the settlement later than his
+companion, grunted.
+
+"One would say thou wert of the Griffin crew thyself, with the latest
+news from Quebec and Montreal."
+
+"Not I," laughed the first one. "I have only been in the woods with
+Greysolon du Lhut, who knows everything."
+
+"Then he told thee the name of this Italian with the copper hand?"
+
+"Assuredly. This Italian with the copper hand is Sieur Greysolon du
+Lhut's cousin, and his name is Henri de Tonty."
+
+"I will say this for Monsieur Henri de Tonty: a better made man never
+stepped on the strand at St. Ignace."
+
+[Illustration: Autograph of Tonty.]
+
+Greysolon du Lhut was the captain of coureurs de bois in the northwest.
+No other leader had such influence with the lawless and daring. When
+these men were gathered in a settlement, spending what they had earned
+in drinking and gaming, it was hard to restrain them within civilized
+bounds. But when they took service to shoulder loads and march into the
+wilderness, the strongest hand could not keep them from open rebellion
+and desertion. There were few devoted and faithful voyageurs, such
+as Pierre Porteret and Jacques had proved themselves in following
+Marquette. The term of service was usually two years; but at the first
+hardship some might slip away in the night, even at the risk of
+perishing before they reached the settlements.
+
+St. Ignace made a procession behind La Salle's party and followed them
+into the chapel to hear mass--French traders, Ottawas, Hurons, coureurs
+de bois, squaws, and children. When the priest turned from the altar, he
+looked down on complexions ranging from the natural pallor of La Salle
+to the black-red of the most weather-beaten native.
+
+[Illustration: Totem of the Hurons.]
+
+The Hurons then living at St. Ignace, whom Father Marquette had led
+there from his earlier mission, afterwards wandered to Detroit and
+Sandusky, the priests having decided to abandon St. Ignace and burn the
+chapel. In our own day we hear of their descendants as settled in the
+Indian Territory, the smallest but wealthiest band of all transplanted
+Indians.
+
+Having entered the lake region with impressive ceremonies, which he
+well knew how to employ before ignorant men and savages, La Salle threw
+aside his splendor, and, with his lieutenant, put on the buckskins for
+marching and canoe journeying into the wilderness. Some of the men he
+had sent up the lakes with goods nearly a year before had collected
+a large store of furs, worth much money; and these he determined to
+send back to Canada on the Griffin, to satisfy his creditors and to give
+him means for carrying on his plans. He had meant, after sending Tonty
+on to the Illinois country, to return to Canada and settle his affairs.
+But it became necessary, as soon as he landed at St. Ignace, to divide
+his party and send Tonty with some of the men to Sault Ste. Marie after
+plunderers who had made off with his goods. The others would doubtless
+desert if left any length of time without a leader. It was a risk also
+to send his ship back to the colony without standing guard over its
+safety himself. But he greatly needed the credit which its load of furs
+would give him. So he determined to send it manned as it was, with
+orders to return to the head of Lake Michigan as soon as the cargo was
+safely landed; while he voyaged down the west side of the lake, and
+Tonty, returning from the Sault, came by the east shore. The reunited
+party would then have the Griffin as a kind of floating fort or refuge,
+and by means of it keep easily in communication with the settlements.
+
+La Salle wanted to build a chain of forts from Niagara to the mouth of
+the Mississippi, when that could be reached. Around each of these, and
+protected by them, he foresaw settlements of French and Indians, and
+a vast trade in furs and the products of the undeveloped west. Thus
+France would acquire a province many times its own size. The undertaking
+was greater than conquering a kingdom. Nobody else divined at that time
+the wonderful promise of the west as La Salle pictured it. Little
+attention had been paid to the discoveries of Marquette and Jolliet.
+France would have got no benefit from them had not La Salle so soon
+followed on the track of missionary and trader, verified what had been
+done, and pushed on.
+
+He had seen Jolliet twice. The first time they met near Niagara, when
+both were exploring; the second time, Jolliet is said to have stopped
+with his maps and papers before they were lost at Fort Frontenac, on
+his return from his Mississippi voyage. La Salle, then master of Fort
+Frontenac, must have examined these charts and journals with interest.
+It does not appear that the two men were ever very friendly. Jolliet
+was too easily satisfied to please La Salle; he had not the ability to
+spread France's dominion over the whole western wilderness, and that was
+what La Salle was planning to do before Marquette and Jolliet set out
+for the Mississippi.
+
+St. Ignace became once more the starting point of an important
+expedition, though La Salle, before sending the Griffin back, sailed in
+her as far as the Bay of Puans, where many of his furs were collected.
+He parted with this good ship in September. She pointed her prow
+eastward, and he turned south with fourteen men in four canoes, carrying
+tools, arms, goods, and even a blacksmith's forge.
+
+Through storm, and famine, and peril with Indians they labored down the
+lake, and did not reach the place where they were to meet Tonty until
+the first of November. La Salle had the three Récollet friars with him.
+Though one was a man sixty-four years old, he bore, with his companions,
+every hardship patiently and cheerfully. The story of priests who helped
+to open the wilderness and who carried religion to savages is a
+beautiful chapter of our national life.
+
+Tonty was not at the place where they were to meet him. This was the
+mouth of the St. Joseph River, which La Salle named the Miamis. The men
+did not want to wait, for they were afraid of starving if they reached
+the Illinois country after the Indians had scattered to winter hunting
+grounds. But La Salle would not go on until Tonty appeared. He put the
+men to work building a timber stockade, which he called Fort Miamis;
+thus beginning in the face of discouragement his plan of creating a line
+of fortifications.
+
+Tonty, delayed by lack of provisions and the need of hunting, reached
+Fort Miamis with his men in twenty days. But the Griffin did not come
+at all. More than time enough had passed for her to reach Fort Niagara,
+unload her cargo, and return. La Salle watched the lake constantly for
+her sails. He began to be heavy-hearted for her, but he dared wait no
+longer; so, sending two men back to meet and guide her to this new post,
+he moved on.
+
+Eight canoes carried his party of thirty-three people. They ascended the
+St. Joseph River to find a portage to the head waters of the Illinois.
+This brought them within the present state of Indiana; and when they had
+reached that curve of the river where South Bend now stands, they left
+St. Joseph to grope for the Theakiki, or Kankakee, a branch called by
+some Indians the Illinois itself.
+
+La Salle became separated from the party on this portage, eagerly and
+fearlessly scouring the woods for the river's beginning. Tonty camped
+and waited for him, fired guns, called, and searched; but he was gone
+all night and until the next afternoon. The stars were blotted overhead,
+for a powder of snow thickened the air, weirdly illuminating naked trees
+in the darkness, but shutting in his vision. It was past midnight when
+he came in this blind circle once more to the banks of the St. Joseph,
+and saw a fire glinting through dense bushes.
+
+"Now I have reached camp," thought La Salle, and he fired his gun to let
+his people know he was approaching. Echoes rolled through the woods.
+Without waiting for a shot in reply he hurried to the fire. No person
+was near it. The descending snow hissed, caught in the flames. Here was
+a home hearth prepared in the wilderness, and no welcome to it but
+silence. La Salle called out in every Indian language he knew. Dead
+branches grated, and the stream rustled betwixt its edges of ice. A heap
+of dry grass was gathered for a bed under a tree by the fire, and its
+elastic top showed the hollow where a man had lain. La Salle put some
+more wood on the fire, piled a barricade of brush around the bed, and
+lay down in a place left warm by some strolling Indian whom his gun had
+frightened away. He slept until morning. In the afternoon he found his
+own camp.
+
+From the first thread of the Kankakee oozing out of swamps to the Indian
+town on the Illinois River where Marquette had done his last missionary
+work, was a long canoe journey. It has been said the rivers of the New
+World made its rapid settlement possible; for they were open highways,
+even in the dead of winter guiding the explorer by their frozen courses.
+
+The Illinois tribe had scattered to their hunting, and the lodges stood
+empty. La Salle's men were famished for supplies, so he ventured to open
+the covered pits in which the Indians stored their corn. Nothing was
+more precious than this hidden grain; but he paid for what he took when
+he reached the Indians. This was not until after New Year's day. He had
+descended the river as far as that expansion now called Peoria Lake.
+
+The Illinois, after their first panic at the appearance of strange white
+men, received La Salle's party kindly, fed all with their own fingers,
+and, as they had done with Jolliet and Marquette when those explorers
+passed them on the Mississippi, tried to coax their guests to go no
+farther. They and other Indians who came to the winter camp told such
+tales of danger on that great river about which the French knew so
+little, that six of La Salle's men deserted in one night.
+
+This caused him to move half a league beyond the Illinois camp,
+where, on the southern bank, he built a palisaded fort and called it
+Crèvecoeur. He was by this time convinced that the Griffin was lost.
+Whether she went down in a storm, or was scuttled and sunk by those to
+whom he intrusted her, nothing was ever heard of her again. The furs he
+had sent to pay his creditors never in any way reached port. If they
+escaped shipwreck, they were stolen by the men who escaped with them.
+
+Nothing could bend La Salle's resolution. He meant in some way to
+explore the west through which the southern Mississippi ran. But the
+loss of the Griffin hurt him sorely. He could not go on without more
+supplies; and having no vessel to bring them, the fearful necessity was
+before him of returning on foot and by canoe to Fort Frontenac to bring
+them himself.
+
+He began to build another ship on the Illinois River, and needed cables
+and rigging for her. This vessel being partly finished by the first of
+March, he left her and Fort Crèvecoeur in Tonty's charge, and, taking
+four Frenchmen and a Mohegan hunter, set out on the long and terrible
+journey to Fort Frontenac.
+
+The Italian commandant with the copper hand could number on its metal
+fingers the only men to be trusted in his garrison of fifteen. One
+Récollet, Father Louis Hennepin, had been sent with two companions by
+La Salle to explore the upper Mississippi. Father Ribourde and Father
+Membré remained. The young Sieur de Boisrondet might also be relied
+on, as well as a Parisian lad named Étienne Renault, and their servant
+L'Esperance. As for the others, smiths, shipwrights, and soldiers were
+ready to mutiny any moment. They cared nothing about the discovery of
+the west. They were afraid of La Salle when he was with them; and,
+though it is said no man could help loving Tonty, these lawless fellows
+loved their own wills better.
+
+The two men that La Salle had sent to look for the Griffin arrived at
+Fort Crèvecoeur, bearing a message from him, having met him on the
+way. They had no news, but he wrote a letter and sent them on to Tonty.
+He urged Tonty to take part of the garrison and go and fortify a great
+rock he had noticed opposite the Illinois town. Whatever La Salle wanted
+done Tonty was anxious to accomplish, though separating himself from
+Crèvecoeur, even for a day, was a dangerous experiment. But he took
+some men and ascended the river to the rock. Straight-way smiths,
+shipwrights, and soldiers in Crèvecoeur, seizing powder, lead, furs,
+and provisions, deserted and made their way back to Canada. Boisrondet,
+the friars, and L'Esperance hurried to tell Tonty; and thus Fort
+Crèvecoeur and the partly finished ship had to be abandoned. Tonty
+dispatched four men to warn La Salle of the disaster. He could neither
+hold this position nor fortify the rock in the midst of jealous savages
+with two friars, one young officer, a lad, and one servant. He took the
+forge, and tools, and all that was left in Crèvecoeur into the very
+heart of the Indian village and built a long lodge, shaped like the
+wigwams of the Illinois. This was the only way to put down their
+suspicion. Seeing that the Frenchmen had come to dwell among them, the
+Indians were pleased, and their women helped with poles and mats to
+build the lodge.
+
+For by this time, so long did it take to cover distances in the
+wilderness, spring and summer were past, and the Illinois were dwelling
+in their great town, nearly opposite the rock which La Salle desired to
+have fortified. Tonty often gazed at it across the river, which flows
+southwestward there, with a ripple that does not break into actual
+rapids. The yellow sandstone height, rising like a square mountain out
+of the shore, was tufted with ferns and trees. No man could ascend it
+except at the southeast corner, and at that place a ladder or a rope was
+needed by the unskillful. It had a flat, grassy top shut in by trees,
+through which one could see the surrounding country as from a tower.
+A ravine behind it was banked and floored with dazzling white sand, and
+walled at the farther side by a timbered cliff rising to a prairie.
+With a score of men Tonty could have held this natural fortress against
+any attack. Buckets might be rigged from overhanging trees to draw up
+water from the river. Provisions and ammunition only were needed for a
+garrison. This is now called Starved Rock, and is nearly opposite the
+town of Utica. Some distance up the river is a longer ridge, yet known
+as Buffalo Rock, easy of ascent at one end, up which the savages are
+said to have chased buffaloes; and precipitous at the other, down which
+the frightened beasts plunged to death.
+
+The tenth day of September a mellow autumn sun shone on maize fields
+where squaws labored, on lazy old braves sprawled around buffalo robes,
+gambling with cherry stones, and on peaceful lodges above which the blue
+smoke faintly wavered. It was so warm the fires were nearly out. Young
+warriors of the tribes were away on an expedition; but the populous
+Indian town swarmed with its thousands.
+
+Father Ribourde and Father Membré had that morning withdrawn a league up
+the river to make what they called a retreat for prayer and meditation.
+The other Frenchmen were divided between lodge and garden.
+
+Near this living town was the town of the dead, a hamlet of scaffolds,
+where, wrapped in skins, above the reach of wolves, Illinois Indians of
+a past generation slept their winters and summers away. Crows flapped
+across them and settled on the corn, causing much ado among the papooses
+who were set to shout and rattle sticks for the protection of the crop.
+
+Suddenly a man ran into camp, having just leaped from the canoe which
+brought him across the river. When he had talked an instant old braves
+bounded to their feet with furious cries, the tribes flocked out of
+lodges, and women and children caught the panic and came screeching.
+
+"What is the matter?" exclaimed Tonty, unable to understand their rapid
+jargon. The Frenchmen drew together with the instinct of uniting in
+peril, and, led by old men, the Indian mob turned on them.
+
+"What is it?" cried Tonty.
+
+"The Iroquois are coming! The Iroquois are coming to eat us up! These
+Frenchmen have brought the Iroquois upon us!"
+
+"Will you stand off!" Tonty warned them. And every brave in the town
+knew what they called the medicine hand in his right gauntlet, powerful
+and hard as a war club. They stood in awe of it as something more than
+human. He put his followers behind him. The Frenchmen crowded back to
+back, facing the savage crowd. Hampered by his imperfect knowledge of
+their language, he hearkened intently to the jangle of raging voices,
+his keen dark eyes sweeping from face to face. Tonty was a man of
+impressive presence, who inspired confidence even in Indians. They held
+back from slaying him and his people, but fiercely accused him. Young
+braves dragged from the French lodge the goods and forge saved from Fort
+Crèvecoeur, and ran yelling to heave everything into the river.
+
+"The Iroquois are your friends! The Iroquois are at peace with the
+French! But they are marching here to eat us up!"
+
+"We know nothing about the Iroquois!" shouted Tonty. "If they are coming
+we will go out with you to fight them!"
+
+Only half convinced, but panic-stricken from former encounters with a
+foe who always drove them off their land, they turned from threatening
+Tonty and ran to push out their canoes. Into these were put the women
+and children, with supplies, and all were paddled down river to an
+island, where guards could be set. The warriors then came back and
+prepared for fighting. They greased their bodies, painted their faces,
+made ready their weapons, and danced and howled to excite one another
+to courage. All night fires along shore, and leaping figures, were
+reflected in the dark river.
+
+About dawn, scouts who had been sent to watch the Iroquois came running
+with news that the enemy were almost in sight across the prairie on the
+opposite side, slipping under cover of woods along a small branch of the
+Illinois River. They had guns, pistols, and swords, and carried bucklers
+of rawhide. The scouts declared that a Jesuit priest and La Salle
+himself led them.
+
+The Frenchmen's lives seemed hardly a breath long. In the midst of
+maddened, screeching savages Tonty and his men once more stood back to
+back, and he pushed off knives with his copper hand.
+
+"Do you want to kill yourselves?" he shouted. "If you kill us, the
+French governor will not leave a man of you alive! I tell you Monsieur
+de la Salle is not with the Iroquois, nor is any priest leading them!
+Do you not remember the good Father Marquette? Would such men as he
+lead tribes to fight one another? If all the Iroquois had stolen French
+clothes, you would think an army of Jesuits and Messieurs de la Salle
+were coming against you!"
+
+"But some one has brought the Iroquois upon us!"
+
+"I told you before we know nothing about the Iroquois! But we will go
+with you now to fight them!"
+
+At that the Illinois put their knives in their belts and ran shouting to
+throw themselves into the canoes. Warfare with American Indians was
+always the rush of a mob, where every one acted for himself without
+military order.
+
+"It is well the good friars are away making their retreat," said Tonty
+to Boisrondet and Étienne Renault while they paddled as fast as they
+could across the river with the Illinois. "Poor old L'Esperance must be
+making a retreat, too."
+
+"I have not myself seen him since last night," Boisrondet remembered.
+
+"He put out in a canoe when the Indians were embarking their women and
+children," said Étienne Renault. "I saw him go."
+
+And so it proved afterwards. But L'Esperance had slipped away to bring
+back Father Membré and Father Ribourde to tend the wounded and dying.
+
+[Illustration: Long House of the Iroquois.]
+
+Having crossed the river and reached the prairie, Tonty and his allies
+saw the Iroquois. They came prancing and screeching on their savage
+march, and would have been ridiculous if they had not been appalling.
+These Hodenosaunee, or People of the Long House, as they called
+themselves, were the most terrible force in the New World. Tonty saw
+at once it would go hard with the Illinois nation. Never at any time
+as hardy as their invaders, who by frequent attacks had broken their
+courage, and weakened by the absence of their best warriors, they
+wavered in their first charge.
+
+He put down his gun and offered to carry a peace belt to the Iroquois to
+stop the fight. The Illinois gladly gave him a wampum girdle and sent a
+young Indian with him. Boisrondet and Étienne Renault also walked at his
+side into the open space between two barbaric armies. The Iroquois did
+not stop firing when he held up and waved the belt in his left hand.
+Bullets spattered on the hummocky sod of the prairie around him.
+
+"Go back," Tonty said to Boisrondet and Renault and the young Indian.
+"What need is there of so many? Take the lad back, Boisrondet."
+
+They hesitated to leave him.
+
+"Go back!" he repeated sharply, so they turned, and he ran on alone. The
+Iroquois guns seemed to flash in his face. It was like throwing himself
+among furious wolves. Snarling lips and snaky eyes and twisting sinuous
+bodies made nightmares around him. He felt himself seized; a young
+warrior stabbed him in the side. The knife glanced on a rib, but blood
+ran down his buckskins and filled his throat.
+
+"Stop!" shouted an Iroquois chief. "This is a Frenchman; his ears are
+not pierced."
+
+Tonty's swarthy skin was blanching with the anguish of his wound, which
+turned him faint. His black hair clung in rings to a forehead wet with
+cold perspiration. But he held the wampum belt aloft and spat the blood
+out of his mouth.
+
+"Iroquois! The Illinois nation are under the protection of the French
+king and Governor Frontenac! I demand that you leave them in peace!"
+
+A young brave snatched his hat and lifted it on the end of a gun.
+At that the Illinois began a frenzied attack, thinking he was killed.
+Tonty was spun around as in a whirlpool. He felt a hand in his hair and
+a knife at his scalp.
+
+"I never," he thought to himself, "was in such perplexity in my life!"
+
+"Burn him!" shouted some.
+
+"But he is French!" others cried. "Let him go!"
+
+Through all the uproar he urged the peace belt and threatened them with
+France. The wholesome dread which Governor Frontenac had given to that
+name had effect on them. Besides, they had not surprised the Illinois,
+and if they declared a truce, time would be gained to consider their
+future movements.
+
+The younger braves were quieted, and old warriors gave Tonty a belt
+to carry back to the Illinois. He staggered across the prairie. Father
+Ribourde and Father Membré, who had just reached the spot, ran to meet
+him, and supported him as he half fainted from loss of blood.
+
+Tonty and his allies withdrew across the river. But the Iroquois,
+instead of retreating, followed. Seeing what must happen, Tonty thought
+it best for the Illinois to give up their town and go to protect their
+women and children, while he attempted as long as possible to keep the
+invaders at bay. Lodges were set on fire, and the Illinois withdrew
+quietly down river, leaving some of their men in the bluffs less than a
+league from the town, to bring them word of the result. The Frenchmen,
+partially rebuilding their own lodge, which had been wrecked when their
+goods were thrown in the river, stood their ground in the midst of
+insulting savages.
+
+For the Iroquois, still determined on war and despoiling, opened maize
+pits, scattering and burning the grain; trampled corn in the fields; and
+even pulled the dead off their scaffolds. They were angry at the French
+for threatening them with that invisible power of France, and bent on
+chasing the Illinois. Yet Tonty was able to force a kind of treaty
+between them and the retreating nation, through the men left in the
+bluffs. As soon as they had made it, however, they began canoes of elm
+bark, to follow the Illinois down river.
+
+Two or three days passed, while the Frenchmen sat covering the invaded
+tribe's retreat. They scarcely slept at night. Their enemies prowled
+around their lodge or celebrated dances on the ruins of the town.
+The river flowed placidly, and the sun shone on desolation and on
+the unaltered ferny buttresses of the great rock and its castellated
+neighbors. Tonty heard with half delirious ears the little creatures
+which sing in the grass and fly before man, but return to their singing
+as soon as he passes by. The friars dressed and tended his fevered
+wound, and when the Iroquois sent for him to come to a council, Father
+Membré went with him.
+
+Within the rude fort of posts and poles saved from ruined lodges, which
+the Iroquois had built for themselves, adding a ruff of freshly chopped
+trees, the two white men sat down in a ring of glowering savages. Six
+packs of beaver skins were piled ready for the oration; and the orator
+rose and addressed Tonty.
+
+With the first two the Indian spokesman promised that his nation would
+not eat Count Frontenac's children, those cowardly Illinois.
+
+The next was a plaster to heal Tonty's wound.
+
+The next was oil to anoint him and the Récollets, so their joints would
+move easily in traveling.
+
+The next said that the sun was bright.
+
+And the sixth and last pack ordered the French to get up and leave
+the country.
+
+When the speaker sat down, Tonty came to his feet and looked at the
+beaver skins piled before them. Then he looked around the circle of hard
+weather-beaten faces and restless eyes, and thanked the Iroquois for
+their gift.
+
+"But I would know," said Tonty, "how soon you yourselves intend to
+leave the country and let the Illinois be in peace?"
+
+There was a growl, and a number of the braves burst out with the
+declaration that they intended to eat Illinois flesh first.
+
+Tonty raised his foot and kicked the beaver skins from him. In that very
+way they would have rejected a one-sided treaty themselves. Up they
+sprang with drawn knives and drove him and Father Membré from the fort.
+
+All night the French stood guard for fear of being surprised and
+massacred in their lodge. At daybreak the chiefs ordered them to go
+without waiting another hour, and gave them a leaky boat.
+
+Tonty had protected the retreat of the Illinois as long as he could.
+With the two Récollets, Boisrondet, young Renault, and L'Esperance, and
+with little else, he set out up the river.
+
+[Illustration: SITE OF FORT ST. LOUIS OF THE ILLINOIS.
+From a Recent Photograph.]
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+THE UNDESPAIRING NORMAN.
+
+
+"The northward current of the eastern shore of Lake Michigan and
+the southward current of the western shore," says a writer exact in
+knowledge, "naturally made the St. Joseph portage a return route to
+Canada, and the Chicago portage an outbound one." But though La Salle
+was a careful observer and must have known that what was then called the
+Chekago River afforded a very short carrying to the Desplaines or upper
+Illinois, he saw fit to use the St. Joseph both coming and going.
+
+His march to Fort Frontenac he afterwards described in a letter to one
+of the creditors interested in his discoveries.
+
+"Though the thaws of approaching spring greatly increased the difficulty
+of the way, interrupted as it was everywhere by marshes and rivers, to
+say nothing of the length of the journey, which is about five hundred
+leagues in a direct line, and the danger of meeting Indians of four or
+five different nations, through whose country we were to pass, as well
+as an Iroquois army which we knew was coming that way; though we must
+suffer all the time from hunger; sleep on the open ground, and often
+without food; watch by night and march by day, loaded with baggage, such
+as blanket, clothing, kettle, hatchet, gun, powder, lead, and skins to
+make moccasins; sometimes pushing through thickets, sometimes climbing
+rocks covered with ice and snow; sometimes wading whole days through
+marshes where the water was waist deep or even more,--all this did not
+prevent me from going to Fort Frontenac to bring back the things we
+needed and to learn myself what had become of my vessel."
+
+Carrying their canoes where the river was frozen, and finally leaving
+them hidden near where the town of Joliet now stands, La Salle and his
+men pushed on until they reached the fort built at the mouth of the St.
+Joseph. Here he found the two voyageurs he had sent to search for the
+Griffin. They said they had been around the lake and could learn nothing
+of her. He then directed them to Tonty, while he marched up the eastern
+shore. This Michigan region was debatable ground among the Indians,
+where they met to fight; and he left significant marks on the trees, to
+make prowlers think he had a large war party. A dozen or twenty roving
+savages, ready to pounce like ferocious wildcats on a camp, always
+peeled white places on the trees, and cut pictures there of their totem,
+or tribe mark, and the scalps and prisoners they had taken. They
+respected a company more numerous than themselves, and avoided it.
+
+Stopping to nurse the sick when some fell ill of exposure, or to build
+canoes when canoes were needed, La Salle did not reach Fort Niagara
+until Easter, and it was May when Fort Frontenac came into view.
+
+No man ever suffered more from treachery. Before he could get
+together the supplies he needed, trouble after trouble fell upon him.
+The men that Tonty had sent to tell him about the destruction of Fort
+Crèvecoeur were followed by others who brought word that the deserters
+had destroyed his forts at the St. Joseph River and Niagara, and carried
+off all the goods. The Griffin was certainly lost. And before going back
+to the Illinois country he was obliged to chase these fellows and take
+from them what could be recovered. But when everybody else seemed
+to be against him, it was much comfort to remember he had a faithful
+lieutenant while the copper-handed Italian lived.
+
+La Salle gathered twenty-five men of trades useful to him, and another
+outfit with all that he needed for a ship, having made new arrangements
+with his creditors; and going by way of Michilimackinac, he reached the
+St. Joseph early in November.
+
+Whenever, in our own day, we see the Kankakee still gliding along its
+rocky bed, or the solemn Illinois spreading betwixt wooded banks, it is
+easy to imagine a birch canoe just appearing around a bend, carrying La
+Salle or Tonty, and rowed by buckskin-clad voyageurs. On the Kankakee
+thousands of buffaloes filled the plains, and La Salle's party killed
+many, preparing the flesh in dried flakes by smoking it.
+
+The buffaloes were left behind when they approached the great town on
+the Illinois. La Salle glanced up at the rock he wanted fortified, but
+no palisade or Frenchman was to be seen.
+
+"It seems very quiet," he said to the men in his canoe, "and we have not
+passed a hunter. There--there is the meadow where the town stood; but
+where is the town?"
+
+Heaps of ashes, charred poles, broken scaffolds, wolves prowling where
+papooses had played, crows whirling in black clouds or sitting in rows
+on naked branches, bones,--a horrible waste plain had taken the place of
+the town.
+
+The Frenchmen scattered over it, eagerly seeking some trace of Tonty and
+his companions. They labored all day, until the sun set, among dreadful
+sights which they could never forget, without finding any clue to his
+fate.
+
+They piled charred wood together and made a fire and camped among ruins.
+But La Salle lay awake all night, watching the sharp-pointed autumn
+stars march overhead, and suffering what must have seemed the most
+unendurable of all his losses.
+
+Determined not to give up his friend, he rose next morning and helped
+the men hide their heavy freight in the rocks, leaving two of them to
+hide with and guard it, and went on down the Illinois River. On one bank
+the retreat of the invaded tribe could be traced, and on the other the
+dead camp-fires of the Iroquois who had followed them. But of Tonty and
+his Frenchmen there was still no sign.
+
+La Salle saw the ruins of Fort Crèvecoeur and his deserted vessel. And
+so searching he came to the mouth of the Illinois and saw for the first
+time that river of his ambitions, the Mississippi. There he turned back,
+leaving a letter tied to a tree, on the chance of its sometime falling
+into the hands of Tonty. There was nothing to do but to take his men and
+goods from among the rocks near the destroyed town and return to Fort
+Miamis, on the St. Joseph, which some of his followers had rebuilt. The
+winter was upon them.
+
+La Salle never sat and brooded over trouble. He was a man of action.
+Shut in with his men and goods, and obliged to wait until spring
+permitted him to take the next step, he began at once to work on Indian
+hunters, and to draw their tribes towards forming a settlement around
+the rock he meant to fortify on the Illinois. Had he been able to attach
+turbulent voyageurs to him as he attached native tribes, his heroic life
+would have ended in success even beyond his dreams. Tonty could better
+deal with ignorant men, his military training standing him in good
+stead; yet Tonty dared scarcely trust a voyageur out of his sight.
+
+While Tonty and La Salle were passing through these adventures, the
+Récollet father, Louis Hennepin, and his two companions, sent by La
+Salle, explored the upper Mississippi. One of these was named Michael
+Ako; the other, Du Gay, a man from Picardy in France.
+
+They left Fort Crèvecoeur on the last day of February, twenty-four
+hours before La Salle started northward, and entered the Mississippi on
+the 12th of March. The great food-stocked stream afforded them plenty of
+game, wild turkeys, buffaloes, deer, and fish. The adventurers excused
+themselves from observing the Lenten season set apart by the Church for
+fasting; but Father Hennepin said prayers several times a day. He was
+a great robust Fleming, with almost as much endurance as that hardy
+Norman, La Salle.
+
+They had paddled about a month up river through the region where
+Marquette and Jolliet had descended, when one afternoon they stopped to
+repair their canoe and cook a wild turkey. Hennepin, with his sleeves
+rolled back, was daubing the canoe with pitch, and the others were busy
+at the fire, when a war whoop, followed by continuous yelling, echoed
+from forest to forest, and a hundred and twenty naked Sioux or Dacotah
+Indians sprang out of boats to seize them. It was no use for Father
+Hennepin to show a peace-pipe or offer fine tobacco. The Frenchmen were
+prisoners. And when these savages learned by questioning with signs, and
+by drawing on the sand with a stick, that the Miamis, whom they were
+pursuing to fight, were far eastward out of their reach, three or four
+old warriors laid their hands on Hennepin's shaven crown and began to
+cry and howl like little boys.
+
+[Illustration: Totem of the Sioux.]
+
+The friar in his long gray capote or hooded garment, which fell to his
+feet, girt about the waist by a rope called the cord of St. Francis,
+stood, with bare toes showing on his sandals, inclining his fat head
+with sympathy. He took out his handkerchief and wiped the old men's
+faces. Du Gay and Ako, in spite of the peril, laughed to see him daub
+the war paint.
+
+"The good father hath no suspicion that these old wretches are dooming
+him to death," said Ako to Du Gay.
+
+It appeared afterwards that this was what the ceremony meant. For
+several days the Frenchmen, carried northward in their captors' boats,
+expected to die. No calumet was smoked with them; and every night one
+of the old chiefs, named Aquipaguetin, who had lost a son in war and
+formed a particular intention of taking somebody's scalp for solace,
+sat by the prisoners stroking them and howling by the hour. One night
+when the Frenchmen were forced to make their fire at the end of the
+camp, Aquipaguetin sent word that he meant to finish them without more
+delay. But they gave him some goods out of the store La Salle had sent
+with them, and he changed his mind and concluded to wait awhile. He
+carried the bones of one of his dead relations, dried and wrapped in
+skins gaily ornamented with porcupine-quill work; and it was his custom
+to lay these bones before the tribe and request that everybody blow
+smoke on them. Of the Frenchmen, however, he demanded hatchets, beads,
+and cloth. This cunning old Sioux wanted to get all he could before the
+party reached their villages, where the spoil would be divided.
+
+Nineteen days after their capture the prisoners were brought to a place
+which is now the site of St. Paul in the state of Minnesota, where the
+Sioux disbanded, scattering to their separate towns. They had finally
+smoked the peace-pipe with the Frenchmen; and now, fortunately without
+disagreement, portioned their white captives and distributed the goods.
+Father Hennepin was given to Aquipaguetin, who promptly adopted him
+as a son. The Flemish friar saw with disgust his gold-embroidered
+vestments, which a missionary always carried with him for the impressive
+celebration of mass, displayed on savage backs and greatly admired.
+
+The explorers were really in the way of seeing as much of the
+upper Mississippi as they could desire. They were far north of the
+Wisconsin's mouth, where white men first entered the great river.
+The young Mississippi, clear as a mountain stream, gathered many small
+tributaries. St. Peter's joined it from a blue-earth channel. This
+rugged northern world was wonderfully beautiful, with valleys and
+heights and rocks and waterfalls.
+
+The Sioux were tall, well-made Indians, and so active that the smaller
+Frenchmen could hardly keep up with them on the march. They sometimes
+carried Du Gay and Ako over streams, but the robust friar they forced to
+wade or swim; and when he lagged lame-footed with exhaustion across the
+prairies, they set fire to grass behind him, obliging him to take to his
+heels with them or burn. By adoption into the family of Aquipaguetin
+he had a large relationship thrust upon him, for the old weeper had
+many wives and children and other kindred. Hennepin indeed felt that
+he was not needed and might at any time be disposed of. He never had
+that confidence in his father Aquipaguetin which a son should repose
+in a parent.
+
+He was separated from Ako and Du Gay, who were taken to other villages.
+By the time he reached father Aquepaguetin's house he was so exhausted,
+and his legs, cut by ice in the streams, were so swollen that he fell
+down on a bear robe. The village was on an island in a sheet of water
+afterwards called Lake Buade. Hennepin was kindly received by his new
+family, who fed him as well as they were able, for the Sioux had little
+food when they were not hunting. Seeing him so feeble, they gave him an
+Indian sweating bath, which he found good for his health. They made a
+lodge of skins so tight that it would hold heat, and put into it stones
+baked to a white heat. On these they poured water and shut Hennepin in
+the steam until he sweated freely.
+
+The Sioux had two kinds of lodges--one somewhat resembling those of the
+Illinois, the other a cone of poles with skins stretched around, called
+a tepee.
+
+Father Hennepin did little missionary work among these Indians. He
+suffered much from hunger, being a man who loved good cheer. But the
+tribes went on a buffalo hunt in July and killed plenty of meat. All
+that northern world was then clothed in vivid verdure. Honeysuckles and
+wild grapevines made the woods fragrant. The gentian, which jealously
+closes its blue-fringed cup from the human eye, grew close to the lakes.
+Captive though the Frenchmen were, they could not help enjoying the
+evening camp-fire with its weird flickerings against the dark of savage
+forests, the heat-lightning which heralded or followed storms, the
+waters, clear, as if filtered through icebergs, dashing in foam over
+mossy rocks.
+
+They met during the buffalo hunt, and it was about this time that some
+"spirits," or white men, were heard of, coming from Lake Superior. These
+proved to be the great ranger Greysolon du Lhut and four other
+Frenchmen.
+
+This man, cousin to Tonty, passed nearly his whole life in the woods,
+going from Indian town to Indian town, or planting outposts of his
+own in the wilderness. Occasionally he went to France, and the king's
+magnificence at Versailles was endured by him until he could gain some
+desired point from the colonial minister and hurry back. The government
+relied on him to keep lawless coureurs de bois within bounds, and he
+traded with nearly all the western tribes. When Greysolon du Lhut
+appeared, the Sioux treated their prisoners with deference; and from
+that time Hennepin, Du Gay, and Ako went where they pleased.
+
+They seemed to have had no thought of returning to Fort Crèvecoeur.
+In those days when each man took his individual life in his hands and
+guarded it in ways which seemed best to him, it was often expedient to
+change one's plan of action. About the time that Tonty was obliged to
+abandon Fort Crèvecoeur, Hennepin and his companions set off eastward
+with Greysolon du Lhut's party. Hennepin sailed for France as soon as he
+could and wrote a book about his adventures. It was one of La Salle's
+misfortunes that this friar should finally even lay claim to discovering
+the mouth of the Mississippi, adding the glory of that to these real
+adventures on its upper waters.
+
+The first of March, La Salle, with a number of the men he had gathered,
+started from Fort Miamis to the Illinois country. The prairies were one
+dazzling expanse of snow, and as the party slid along on the broad,
+flat snowshoes to which their feet were strapped, some of them were
+so blinded that the pain in their eyes became unendurable. These were
+obliged to camp in the edge of some woods, while the rest went on.
+
+La Salle himself was sitting in darkness while the spring sun struck a
+million sparkles from a world yet locked in winter. The wind chilled
+his back, and he spread his hands to the camp blaze. In the torment
+of snow-blindness he wondered whether Tonty was treading these white
+wastes, seeking him, or lying dead of Indian wounds under the snow
+crust. The talk of the other snow-blinded men, sitting about or
+stretched with their feet to the fire, was lost on his ear. Yet his one
+faithful servant, who went with him on all his journeys, could not see
+anything but calm fortitude on his face as he lifted it at the approach
+of snowshoes.
+
+"I cannot see you, Hunaut," said La Salle. "Did you find some pine
+leaves?"
+
+"I found some, monsieur."
+
+"Steep them as soon as you can for the men's eyes."
+
+"I wish to tell you, monsieur," the man said as he went about his task
+with a snow-filled kettle, "that I found also a party of Fox Indians
+from Green Bay, and they gave me news of Monsieur de Tonty."
+
+Hunaut looked at the long, pale face of his master and saw the under lip
+tremble and twitch.
+
+"You know I am much bound to Monsieur de Tonty. Is he alive?"
+
+"He is alive, monsieur. He has been obliged to pass the winter at Green
+Bay. Father Hennepin has also passed through that country on his way to
+Montreal."
+
+La Salle felt his troubles melt with the unlocking of winter. The brief
+but agonizing snow-blindness passed away with a thaw; and, overtaking
+his other men, he soon met the returning Illinois tribe and began the
+Indian settlement around the rock he intended to fortify.
+
+Already the Miami tribe was following him, and he drew them into an
+alliance with the Illinois, impressively founding the principality soon
+to grow there. This eloquent Norman Frenchman had gifts in height and
+the large bone and sinew of Normandy, which his Indian allies always
+admired. And he well knew where to impress his talk with coats, shirts,
+guns, and hunting-knives. As his holdings of land in Canada were made
+his stepping-stones toward the west, so the footing he gained at Fort
+Miamis and in the Illinois country was to be used in discovering the
+real course of the Mississippi and taking possession of its vast basin.
+
+It was the end of May before he met Tonty at St. Ignace; Italian and
+Frenchman coming together with outstretched arms and embracing. Tonty's
+black eyes were full of tears, but La Salle told his reverses as calmly
+as if they were another man's.
+
+"Any one else," said Father Membré, who stood by, "would abandon the
+enterprise, but Monsieur de la Salle has no equal for constancy of
+purpose."
+
+"But where is Father Ribourde?" La Salle inquired, missing the other
+Récollet.
+
+Tonty told him sorrowfully how Father Ribourde had gone into the woods
+when his party camped, after being driven up river in a leaky boat by
+the Iroquois; how they had waited and searched for him, and were finally
+made aware that a band of prowling Kickapoos had murdered him.
+
+Tonty had aimed at Green Bay by the Chicago portage, and tramped along
+the west shore of Lake Michigan, having found it impossible to patch the
+boat.
+
+"We were nearly starved," he said; "but we found a few ears of corn and
+some frozen squashes in a deserted Indian town. When we reached the bay
+we found an old canoe and mended it; but as soon as we were on the water
+there rose a northwest wind with driving snow, which lasted nearly five
+days. We ate all our food, and, not knowing what to do, turned back to
+the deserted town to die by a warm fire in one of the wigwams. On the
+way the bay froze. We camped to make moccasins out of Father Membré's
+cloak. I was angry at Étienne Renault for not finishing his; but he
+excused himself on account of illness, having a great oppression of the
+stomach, caused by eating a piece of an Indian rawhide shield which he
+could not digest. His delay proved our salvation, for the next day, as I
+was urging him to finish the moccasins, a party of Ottawas saw the smoke
+of our fire and came to us. We gave them such a welcome as never was
+seen before. They took us into their canoes and carried us to an Indian
+village only two leagues off. All the Indians took pleasure in sending
+us food; so, after thirty-four days of starvation, we found our famine
+turned to abundance."
+
+Tonty and La Salle, with their followers, paddled the thousand miles to
+Fort Frontenac, to make another start into the wilderness.
+
+La Salle was now determined to keep his men together. He set down many
+of his experiences and thoughts in letters which have been kept; so we
+know at this day what was in the great explorer's mind, and how dear he
+held "Monsieur de Tonty, who is full of zeal."
+
+On his return to the wilderness with another equipment, he went around
+the head of Lake Michigan and made the short Chicago portage to the
+Desplaines River. Entering by this branch the frozen Illinois, they
+dragged their canoes on sledges past the site of the town and reached
+open water below Peoria Lake. La Salle gave up the plan of building a
+ship, and determined to go on in his canoes to the mouth of the
+Mississippi.
+
+So, pausing to hunt when game was needed, his company of fifty-four
+persons entered the great river, saw the Missouri rushing into it--muddy
+current and clear northern stream flowing alongside until the waters
+mingled. They met and overawed the Indians on both shores, building
+several stockades. The broad river seemed to fill a valley, doubling and
+winding upon itself with innumerable curves, in its solemn and lonely
+stretches. Huge pieces of low-lying bank crumbled and fell in with
+splashes, for the Mississippi ceaselessly eats away its own shore.
+
+A hundred leagues below the mouth of the Arkansas they came to a swamp
+on the west side. Behind this swamp, they had been told, might be found
+the Arkansas tribe's great town. La Salle sent Tonty and Father Membré,
+with some voyageurs, to make friends with the Indians and bring him word
+about the town.
+
+Tonty had seen nothing like it in the New World. The houses were large
+and square, of sun-baked brick, with a dome of canes overhead. The two
+largest were the chief's house and the temple. Doors were the only
+openings. Tonty and the friar were taken in where the chief sat on a
+bedstead with his squaws, and sixty old men, in white mulberry bark
+cloaks, squatted by with the dignity of a council. The wives, in order
+to honor the sovereign, yelled.
+
+The temple was a place where dead chiefs' bones were kept. A mud wall
+built around it was ornamented with skulls. The inside was very rough.
+Something like an altar stood in the center of the floor; and a fire of
+logs was kept burning before it, and never allowed to go out, filling
+the place with smoke, and irritating the eyes of two old Indians who
+tended it in half darkness. The Frenchmen were not allowed to look into
+a secret place where the temple treasure was kept. But, hearing it
+consisted of pearls and trinkets, Tonty conjectured the Indians had got
+it from the Spanish. This tribe was not unlike the Aztecs of Mexico.
+The chief came in barbaric grandeur to visit La Salle, dressed in white,
+having fans carried before him, and a plate of burnished copper to
+represent the sun, for these lower Mississippians were sun-worshipers.
+
+With gifts and the grave consideration which instantly won Indians, La
+Salle moved from tribe to tribe towards the Gulf. Red River pulsed upon
+the course like a discharging artery. The sluggish alligator woke from
+the ooze and poked up his snout at the canoes. "He is," says a quaint
+old writer who made that journey afterwards, "the most frightful
+master-fish that can be seen. I saw one that was as large as half a
+hogshead. There are some, they say, as large as a hogshead and twelve
+to fifteen feet long. I have no doubt they would swallow up a man if
+they caught him."
+
+[Illustration: La Salle at the Mouth of the Mississippi.]
+
+In April La Salle reached his goal. He found that the Mississippi
+divided its current into three strands and entered the Gulf through
+three mouths. He separated his party; La Salle took the west passage,
+and Tonty and another lieutenant the middle and the east. At the Gulf of
+Mexico they came together again, and with solemn ceremonies claimed for
+France all the country along the great river's entire length, and far
+eastward and westward, calling it Louisiana, in honor of King Louis XIV.
+A metal plate, bearing the arms of France, the king's name, and the date
+of the discovery, was fixed on a pillar in the shifting soil.
+
+Hardy as he was, La Salle sometimes fell ill from the great exposures
+he endured. And more than once he was poisoned by some revengeful
+voyageur. It was not until the December following his discovery of the
+Mississippi's mouth that he realized his plan of fortifying the rock
+on the Illinois River. He and Tonty delighted in it, calling it Fort
+St. Louis of the Illinois. Storehouses and quarters for a garrison rose
+around its edges, protected by a palisade. A windlass was rigged to draw
+water from the river below. On the northeast corner of the rock a low
+earthwork remains to this day.
+
+Around this natural castle the Indian tribes gathered to La Salle, as to
+a sovereign,--Miamis, Abenakis, and Shawanoes, from countries eastward,
+and the Illinois returned to spread over their beloved meadow. Instead
+of one town, many towns of log, or rush, or bark lodges could be seen
+from the summit of the Rock. Years afterwards the French still spoke of
+this fortress as Le Rocher. A little principality of twenty thousand
+inhabitants, strong enough to repel any attack of the Iroquois, thus
+helped to guard it. La Salle meant to supply his people with goods and
+give them a market for their furs. At this time he could almost see the
+success of his mighty enterprise assured; he could reasonably count on
+strengthening his stockades along the Mississippi, and on building near
+its mouth a city which would protect the entire west and give an outlet
+to the undeveloped wealth of the continent.
+
+[Illustration: Louis XIV., King of France.]
+
+In the flush of his discovery and success La Salle went back to France,
+leaving Tonty in charge of the Rock and the gathering Indian nations,
+and laid his actual achievements before the king, asking for help. This
+was made necessary by the change in the colonial government, which had
+removed his friend Count Frontenac and left him at the mercy of enemies.
+
+The king was not slow to see the capacity of this wonderful man, so shy
+of civilization that he lodged in a poor street, carrying with him the
+very breath of the wilderness. La Salle asked for two ships; the king
+gave him four; and many people and supplies were gathered to colonize
+and stock the west.
+
+It was La Salle's intention to sail by way of the West Indies, cross the
+Gulf of Mexico, and enter the mouth of the Mississippi. But the Gulf of
+Mexico is rimmed with low marshy land, and he had never seen the mouth
+of the Mississippi from seaward. His unfamiliarity with the coast, or
+night, or fog cheated him of his destination, and the colony was landed
+four hundred miles west of it, in a place called Matagorda Bay, in
+Texas, which then belonged to the Spaniards. Although at the time of
+discovery he had taken the latitude of that exact spot where he set the
+post, he had been unable to determine the longitude; any lagoon might be
+an opening of the triple mouth he sought.
+
+La Salle's brother, a priest, who sailed with him on this voyage,
+testified afterwards that the explorer died believing he was near the
+mouth of the Mississippi. Whatever may have been his thoughts, the
+undespairing Norman grappled with his troubles in the usual way.
+One of his vessels had been captured by the Spanish. Another had been
+wrecked in the bay by seamen who were willing to injure him. These
+contained supplies most needed for the colony. The third sailed away and
+left him; and his own little ship, a gift of the king for his use along
+the coast, was sunk by careless men while he was absent searching
+northward for the Mississippi.
+
+Many of the colonists fell sick and died. Men turned sullen and tried to
+desert. Some went hunting and were never seen again. Indians, who dare
+not openly attack, skulked near and set the prairie on fire; and that
+was a sight of magnificence, the earth seeming to burn like a furnace,
+or, far as the eye could follow them, billows of flame rushing as across
+a fire sea. But La Salle was wise, and cut the grass close around his
+powder and camp.
+
+[Illustration: La Salle's Map of Texas.]
+
+Water, plains, trees combined endlessly, like the pieces of a
+kaleidoscope, to confuse him in his search. Tonty was not at hand to
+take care of the colony while he groped for the lost river. He moved his
+wretched people from their camp, with all goods saved off the wreck in
+the bay, to a better site for a temporary fort, on rising ground. The
+carpenters proved good for nothing. La Salle himself planned buildings
+and marked out mortises on the logs. First a large house roofed with
+hides, and divided into apartments, was finished to shelter all.
+Separate houses were afterwards built for the women and girls, and
+barracks or rougher cells for the men. A little chapel was finally
+added. And when high-pointed palisades surrounded the whole, La Salle,
+perhaps thinking of his invincible rock on the Illinois and the
+faithfulness of his copper-handed lieutenant guarding it, called this
+outpost also Fort St. Louis. Cannon were mounted at the four corners of
+the large house. As the balls were lost, they were loaded with bullets
+in bags.
+
+Behind, the prairies stretched away to forests. In front rolled the bay,
+with the restless ever-heaving motion of the Mexican Gulf. A delicious
+salty air, like the breath of perpetual spring, blew in, tingling the
+skin of the sulkiest adventurer with delight in this virgin world.
+Fierce northers must beat upon the colonists, and the languors of summer
+must in time follow; and they were homesick, always watching for sails.
+Yet they had no lack of food. Oysters were so plentiful in the bay that
+they could not wade without cutting their feet with the shells. Though
+the alligator pushed his ugly snout and ridgy back out of lagoons, and
+horned frogs frightened the children, and the rattlesnake was to be
+avoided where it lay coiled in the grass, game of all kinds abounded.
+Every man was obliged to hunt, and every woman and child to help smoke
+the meat. Even the priests took guns in their hands. Father Membré
+had brought some buffalo traditions from the Illinois country. He was
+of Father Hennepin's opinion that this wild creature might be trained
+to draw the plow, and he had faith that benevolence was concealed
+behind its wicked eyes.
+
+As Father Membré stalked along the prairie with the hunters, his capote
+tucked up out of his way on its cord, one of the men shot a buffalo and
+it dropped. The buffaloes rarely fell at once, even when wounded to
+death, unless hit in the spine. Father Membré approached it curiously.
+
+"Come back, Father!" shouted the hunters.
+
+Father Membré touched it gently with his gun.
+
+"Run, Father, run!" cried the hunters.
+
+"It is dead," asserted Father Membré. "I will rest my gun across its
+carcass to steady my aim at the other buffaloes."
+
+He knelt to rest his gun across its back.
+
+The great beast heaved convulsively to its feet and made a dash at the
+Récollet. It sent him revolving heels over head. But Father Membré got
+up, and, spreading his capote in both hands, danced in front of the
+buffalo to head it off from escaping. At that, with a bellow, the shaggy
+creature charged over him across the prairie, dropping to its knees and
+dying before the frightened hunters could lift the friar from the ground.
+
+"Are you hurt, Father?" they all asked, supporting him, and finding it
+impossible to keep from laughing as he sat up, with his reverend face
+skinned and his capote nearly torn off.
+
+"Not unto death," responded Father Membré, brushing grass and dirty hoof
+prints from his garment. "But it hath been greatly impressed on my mind
+that this ox-savage is no fit beast for the plow. Nor will I longer
+counsel our women to coax the wild cows to a milking. It is well to
+adapt to our needs the beasts of a country," said Father Membré, wiping
+blood from his face. "But this buffalo creature hath disappointed me!"
+
+La Salle was prostrated through the month of November. But by Christmas
+he was able to set out on a final search from which he did not intend
+to return until he found the Mississippi. All hands in the fort were
+busied on the outfit necessary for the party. Clothes were made of sails
+recovered from one of the wrecked vessels. Eighteen men were to follow
+La Salle, among them his elder brother, the Abbé Cavelier. Some had on
+the remains of garments they had worn in France, and others were dressed
+in deer or buffalo skins. He had bought five horses of the Indians to
+carry the baggage.
+
+At midnight on Christmas Eve everybody crowded into the small fortress
+chapel. The priests, celebrating mass, moved before the altar in such
+gold-embroidered vestments as they had, and the light of torches
+illuminated the rough log walls. Those who were to stay and keep the
+outpost, literally lost in the wilderness, were on their knees weeping.
+Those who were to go knelt also, with the dread of an awful uncertainty
+in their minds. The faithful ones foresaw worse than peril from forests
+and waters and savages, for La Salle could not leave behind all the
+villains with whom he was obliged to serve himself. He alone showed the
+composure of a man who never despairs. If he had positively known that
+he was setting out upon a fatal journey,--that he was undertaking his
+last march through the wilderness,--the mass lights would still have
+shown the firm face of a man who did not turn back from any enterprise.
+The very existence of these people who had come out to the New World
+with him depended on his success. Whatever lay in the road he had to
+encounter it. The most splendid lives may progress and end through what
+we call tragedy; but it is better to die in the very stress of achievement
+than to stretch a poor existence through a century. The contagion of his
+hardihood stole out like the Christmas incense and spread through the
+chapel.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+FRENCH SETTLEMENTS.
+
+
+"It was the establishment of military posts throughout this vast valley
+that eventually brought on a life struggle between the English and the
+French," says a historian.
+
+At first the only spot of civilization in boundless wilderness was
+Tonty's little fort on the Illinois. Protected by it, the Indians went
+hunting and brought in buffalo skins and meat; their women planted
+and reaped maize; children were born; days came and went; autumn haze
+made the distances pearly; winter snow lay on the wigwams; men ran on
+snowshoes; and papooses shouted on the frozen river. Still no news came
+from La Salle.
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF THE FRENCH SETTLEMENTS.]
+
+Tonty had made a journey to the mouth of the Mississippi to meet him,
+after he landed with his colony, searching thirty leagues in each
+direction along the coast. La Salle was at that time groping through a
+maze of lagoons in Texas. Tonty, with his men, waded swamps to their
+necks, enduring more suffering than he had ever endured in his life
+before. This was in February of the year 1686. Finding it impossible to
+reach La Salle, who must be wandering somewhere on the Gulf of Mexico,
+Tonty wrote a letter to him, intrusting it to the hands of an Indian
+chief, with directions that it be delivered when the explorer appeared.
+He also left a couple of men who were willing to wait in the Arkansas
+villages to meet La Salle.
+
+Two years passed before those men brought positive proof of the
+undespairing Norman's fate. The remnant of the party that started with
+La Salle from Fort St. Louis of Texas spent one winter at Fort St. Louis
+of the Illinois, bringing word that they had left their leader in good
+health on the coast. The Abbé Cavelier even collected furs in his
+brother's name, and went on to France, carrying his secret with him.
+
+La Salle had been assassinated on the Trinity River, soon after setting
+out on his last determined search for the Mississippi. The eighteenth
+day of March, 1687, some of his brutal voyageurs hid themselves in
+bushes and shot him.
+
+So slowly did events move then, and so powerless was man, an atom in the
+wilderness, that the great-hearted Italian, weeping aloud in rage and
+grief, realized that La Salle's bones had been bleaching a year and a
+half before the news of his death reached his lieutenant. It was not
+known that La Salle received burial. The wretches who assassinated him
+threw him into some brush. It was a satisfaction to Tonty that they all
+perished miserably afterwards; those who survived quarrels among
+themselves being killed by the Indians.
+
+The undespairing Norman died instantly, without feeling or admitting
+defeat. And he was not defeated. Though his colony--including Father
+Membré, who had been so long with him--perished by the hands of the
+Indians in Texas, in spite of Tonty's second journey to relieve them,
+his plan of settlements from the great lakes to the mouth of the
+Mississippi became a reality.
+
+Down from Canada came two of the eleven Le Moyne brothers, D'Iberville
+and Bienville, fine fighting sons of a powerful colonial family, with
+royal permission to found near the great river's mouth that city which
+had been La Salle's dream. Fourteen years after La Salle's death, while
+D'Iberville was exploring for a site, the old chief, to whom Tonty had
+given a letter for La Salle, brought it carefully wrapped and delivered
+it into the hands of La Salle's more fortunate successor.
+
+Tonty was associated with Le Moyne D'Iberville in these labors around
+the Gulf.
+
+[Illustration: Autograph of Le Moyne D'Iberville.]
+
+A long peninsula betwixt the Mississippi and Kaskaskia Rivers, known
+since as the American Bottom, lured away Indians from the great town on
+the Illinois. The new settlement founded on this peninsula was called
+Kaskaskia, for one of the tribes. As other posts sprung into existence,
+Fort St. Louis was less needed. "As early as 1712," we are told, "land
+titles were issued for a common field in Kaskaskia. Traders had already
+opened a commerce in skins and furs with the remote post of Isle
+Dauphine in Mobile Bay." Settlements were firmly established. By 1720
+the luxuries of Europe came into the great tract taken by La Salle in
+the name of King Louis and called Louisiana.
+
+Twelve years after La Salle's death a missionary named St. Cosme (Sant'
+Come) journeyed from Canada in a party guided by Tonty. St. Cosme has
+left this record of the man with the copper hand:--
+
+"He guided us as far as the Arkansas and gave us much pleasure on the
+way, winning friendship of some savages and intimidating others who from
+jealousy or desire to plunder opposed the voyage; not only doing the
+duty of a brave man but that of a missionary. He quieted the voyageurs,
+by whom he was generally loved, and supported us by his example in
+devotion."
+
+On the Chicago portage a little boy, given to the missionary perhaps
+because he was an orphan and the western country offered him the best
+chances in life, started eagerly ahead, though he was told to wait. The
+rest of the party, having goods and canoes to carry from the Chicago
+River to the Desplaines, lost sight of him, and he was never seen again.
+Autumn grass grew tall over the marshy portage, but they dared not set
+it afire, though his fate was doubtless hidden in that grass. The party
+divided and searched for him, calling and firing guns. Three days they
+searched, and daring to wait no longer, for it was November and the
+river ready to glaze with ice, they left him to some French people at
+the post of Chicago. But the child was not found. He disappeared and no
+one ever knew what became of him.
+
+Like this is Henri de Tonty's disappearance from history. The records
+show him working with Le Moyne D'Iberville and Le Moyne de Bienville to
+found New Orleans and Mobile, pushing the enterprises which La Salle had
+begun. He has been blamed with the misbehavior of a relative of his,
+Alphonse de Tonty, who got into disgrace at the post of Detroit. Little
+justice has been done to the memory of this man, who should not be
+forgotten in the west. So quietly did he slip out of life that his
+burial place is unknown. Some people believe that he came back to the
+Rock long after its buildings were dismantled and it had ceased to be
+Fort St. Louis of the Illinois. Others say he died in Mobile. But it is
+probable that both La Salle and Tonty left their bodies to the
+wilderness which their invincible spirits had conquered.
+
+After the settlement of Kaskaskia a strong fortress was built sixteen
+miles above, on the same side of the Mississippi. The king of France
+spent a million crowns strengthening this place, which was called Fort
+Chartres. Its massive walls, inclosing four acres, and its buildings and
+arched gateway were like some medieval stronghold strangely transplanted
+from the Old World. White uniformed troops paraded. A village sprang up
+around it. Fort Chartres was the center of government until Kaskaskia
+became the first capital of the Illinois territory. Applications for
+land had to be made at this post. Indians on the Mississippi, for it was
+a little distance from the shore, heard drumbeat and sunset gun, and
+were proud of going in and out of its mighty gateway under the white
+flag of France.
+
+Other villages began on the eastern bank of the river--Cahokia, opposite
+the present city of St. Louis, and Prairie du Rocher, nearer Kaskaskia.
+Ste. Genevieve also was built in what is now the state of Missouri, on
+land which then was claimed by the Spaniards. There was a Post of
+Natchitoches on the Red River, as well as a Post of Washita on the
+Washita River. Settlements were also founded upon La Fourche and Fausse
+Rivière above New Orleans.
+
+"The finest country we have seen," wrote one of the adventurers in those
+days, "is all from Chicago to the Tamaroas. It is nothing but prairie
+and clumps of wood as far as you can see. The Tamaroas are eight leagues
+from the Illinois." Chicago was a landing place and portage from the
+great lakes long before a stockade with a blockhouse was built called
+Fort Dearborn.
+
+"Monjolly," wrote the same adventurer, "or Mount Jolliet, is a mound of
+earth on the prairie on the right side of the Illinois River as you go
+down, elevated about thirty feet. The Indians say at the time of the
+great deluge one of their ancestors escaped, and this little mountain is
+his canoe which he turned over there."
+
+La Salle had learned from the Iroquois about the Ohio River. But the
+region through which it flowed to the Mississippi remained for a long
+while an unbroken wilderness. The English settlements on their strip of
+Atlantic coast, however, and the French settlements in the west, reached
+gradually out over this territory and met and grappled. Whichever power
+got and kept the mastery of the west would get the mastery of the
+continent.
+
+The territory of Kentucky, like that of Michigan, was owned by no tribe
+of Indians. "It was the common hunting and fighting ground of Ohio
+tribes on the north and Cherokees and Chickasaws on the south."
+
+There was indeed one exception to the uninhabited state of all that land
+stretching betwixt the Alleghanies and the Mississippi. Vincennes, now
+a town of Indiana, was, after Kaskaskia, the oldest place in the west.
+This isolated post is said to have been founded by French soldiers and
+emigrants. Five thousand acres were devoted to the common field. De
+Vincennes, for whom it was named, was a nephew of Louis Jolliet. And
+while it is not at all certain that he founded the post, he doubtless
+sojourned there in the Indiana country during his roving life. A small
+stockade on the site of the town of Fort Wayne is said to have been
+built by him.
+
+French settlements began to extend southward from Lake Erie to the head
+waters of the Ohio, like a chain to check the English. Presqu' Isle, now
+Erie, Pennsylvania, was founded about the same time as Vincennes.
+
+A French settler built his house in an inclosure of two or three acres.
+The unvarying model was one story high, with porches or galleries
+surrounding it. Wooden walls were filled and daubed with a solid mass of
+what was called cat-and-clay, a mixture of mortar and chopped straw or
+Spanish moss. The chimney was of the same materials, shaped by four long
+corner posts, wide apart below, and nearer together at the top.
+
+As fast as children grew up and married they built their cottages
+in their father's yard; and so it went on, until with children and
+grandchildren and great-grandchildren, a small village accumulated
+around one old couple.
+
+The French were not anxious to obtain grants of the rich wild land.
+Every settlement had its common field, large or small, as was desired.
+A portion of this field was given to each person in the village for his
+own, and he was obliged to cultivate it and raise food for his family.
+If a man neglected his ground, it was taken from him. A large tract of
+land called the common pasture was also inclosed for everybody's cattle
+to graze in.
+
+Sometimes houses were set facing one court, or center, like a camp, for
+defense. But generally the French had little trouble with their savage
+neighbors, who took very kindly to them. The story of western settlement
+is not that dreadful story of continual wars with Indians which reddens
+the pages of eastern colonies. The French were gay people. They loved to
+dance and hunt and spend their time in amusements. While the serious,
+stubborn English were grubbing out the foundations of great states on
+the Atlantic coast, it must be confessed these happy folks cared little
+about developing the rich Mississippi valley.
+
+During all its early occupation this hospitable land abounded with game.
+Though in November the buffaloes became so lean that only their tongues
+were eaten, swans, geese, and ducks were always plentiful, and the fish
+could not be exhausted.
+
+On a day in February, people from Kaskaskia hurried over the road which
+then stretched a league to the Mississippi, for the town was on the
+Kaskaskia River bank. There were settlers in blanket capotes, shaped
+like friars' frocks, with hoods to draw over their heads. If it had
+been June instead of February, a blue or red kerchief would have covered
+the men's heads. The dress of an ordinary frontiersman in those days
+consisted of shirt, breech-cloth, and buckskin leggins, with moccasins,
+and neips, or strips of blanket wrapped around the feet for stockings.
+The voyageur so equipped could undertake any hardship. But in the
+settlements wooden shoes were worn instead of moccasins, and garments of
+texture lighter than buckskin. The women wore short gowns, or long, full
+jackets, and petticoats; and their moccasins were like those of squaws,
+ornamented with beautiful quill-work. Their outer wraps were not unlike
+the men's; so a multitude of blanket capotes flocked toward the
+Mississippi bank, which at that time had not been washed away, and rose
+steeply above the water. They had all run to see a procession of boats
+pass by from Fort Chartres.
+
+A little negro had brought the news that the boats were in sight. Black
+slaves were owned by some of the French; and Indian slaves, sold by
+their captors to the settlers, had long been members of these
+patriarchal households. Many of them had left their work to follow their
+masters to the river; the negroes pointing and shouting, the Indians
+standing motionless and silent.
+
+The sun flecked a broad expanse of water, and down this shining track
+rushed a fleet of canoes; white uniforms leading, and brick-colored
+heads above dusky-fringed buckskins following close after. This little
+army waved their hands and fired guns to salute the crowd on shore. The
+crowd all jangled voices in excited talk, no man listening to what
+another said.
+
+"See you--there are Monsieur Pierre D'Artaguette and the Chevalier De
+Vincennes and excellent Father Senat in the first boat."
+
+"The young St. Ange and Sieur Lalande follow them."
+
+"How many of our good Indians have thrown themselves into this
+expedition! The Chickasaw nation may howl when they see this array!
+They will be taught to leave the boats from New Orleans alone!"
+
+"But suppose Sieur De Bienville and his army do not meet the Commandant
+D'Artaguette when he reaches the Chickasaw country?"
+
+"During his two years at Fort Chartres has Sieur D'Artaguette made
+mistakes? The expedition will succeed."
+
+"The saints keep that beautiful boy!--for to look at him, though he is
+so hardy, Monsieur Pierre D'Artaguette is as handsome as a woman. I have
+heard the southern tribes sacrifice their own children to the sun. This
+is a fair company of Christians to venture against such devils."
+
+The Chickasaws, occupying a tract of country now stretching across
+northern Mississippi and western Tennessee, were friendly to the English
+and willing to encroach on the French. They interrupted river traffic
+and practiced every cruelty on their prisoners. D'Artaguette knew
+as well as the early explorers that in dealing with savages it is a
+fatal policy to overlook or excuse their ill-behavior. They themselves
+believed in exact revenge, and despised a foe who did not strike back,
+their insolence becoming boundless if not curbed. So he had planned with
+Le Moyne de Bienville a concerted attack on these allies of the English.
+Bienville, bringing troops up river from New Orleans, was to meet him in
+the Chickasaw country on a day and spot carefully specified.
+
+[Illustration: Autograph of Bienville.]
+
+The brilliant pageant of canoes went on down the river, seeming to grow
+smaller, until it dwindled to nothingness in the distance.
+
+But in the course of weeks only a few men came back, sent by the
+Chickasaws, to tell about the fate of their leaders. The troops from
+New Orleans did not keep the appointment, arriving too late and then
+retreating. D'Artaguette, urged by his Indians, made the attack with
+such force as he had, and his brave array was destroyed. He and the
+Chevalier Vincennes, with Laland, Father Senat, and many others, a circle
+of noble human torches, perished at the stake. People lamented aloud in
+Kaskaskia and Cahokia streets, and the white flag of France slipped down
+to half-mast on Fort Chartres.
+
+This victory made the Chickasaw Indians so bold that scarcely a French
+convoy on the river escaped them. There is a story that a young girl
+reached the gate of Fort Chartres, starving and in rags, from wandering
+through swamps and woods. She was the last of a family arrived from
+France, and sought her sister, an officer's wife, in the fort. The
+Chickasaws had killed every other relative; she, escaping alone, was
+ready to die of exposure when she saw the flag through the trees.
+
+But another captain of Fort Chartres, no bolder than young Pierre
+D'Artaguette, but more fortunate, named Neyon de Villiers, twenty years
+afterwards led troops as far east as the present state of Pennsylvania,
+and helped his brother, Coulon de Villiers, continue the struggle
+betwixt French and English by defeating, at Fort Necessity, the English
+commanded by a young Virginia officer named George Washington.
+
+[Illustration: INDIAN GAME OF BALL.
+After Catlin.]
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+THE LAST GREAT INDIAN.
+
+
+The sound of the Indian drum was heard on Detroit River, and humid May
+night air carried it a league or more to the fort. All the Pottawatomies
+and Wyandots were gathered from their own villages on opposite shores
+to the Ottawas on the south bank, facing Isle Cochon. Their women and
+children squatted about huge fires to see the war dance. The river
+strait, so limpidly and transparently blue in daytime, that dipping a
+pailful of it was like dipping a pailful of the sky, scarcely glinted
+betwixt darkened woods.
+
+In the center of an open space, which the camp-fires were built to
+illuminate, a painted post was driven into the ground, and the warriors
+formed a large ring around it. Their moccasined feet kept time to the
+booming of the drums. With a flourish of his hatchet around his head, a
+chief leaped into the ring and began to chase an imaginary foe, chanting
+his own deeds and those of his forefathers. He was a muscular rather
+than a tall Indian, with high, striking features. His dark skin was
+colored by war paint, and he had stripped himself of everything but
+ornaments. Ottawa Indians usually wore brilliant blankets, while
+Wyandots of Sandusky and Detroit paraded in painted shirts, their heads
+crowned with feathers, and their leggins tinkling with little bells.
+The Ojibwas, or Chippewas, of the north carried quivers slung on their
+backs, holding their arrows.
+
+The dancer in the ring was the Ottawa chief, Pontiac, a man at that
+time fifty years old, who had brought eighteen savage nations under his
+dominion, so that they obeyed his slightest word. With majestic sweep of
+the limbs he whirled through the pantomime of capturing and scalping an
+enemy, struck the painted post with his tomahawk, and raised the awful
+war whoop. His young braves stamped and yelled with him. Another leaped
+into the ring, sung his deeds, and struck the painted post, warrior
+after warrior following, until a wild maze of sinewy figures swam and
+shrieked around it. Blazing pine knots stuck in the ground helped to
+show this maddened whirl, the very opposite of the peaceful, floating
+calumet dance. Boy papooses, watching it, yelled also, their black eyes
+kindling with full desire to shed blood.
+
+Perhaps no Indian there, except Pontiac, understood what was beginning
+with the war dance on that May night of the year 1763. He had been
+laying his plans all winter, and sending huge black and purple wampum
+belts of war, and hatchets dipped in red, to rouse every native tribe.
+All the Algonquin stock and the Senecas of the Iroquois were united with
+him. From the small oven-shaped hut on Isle Cochon, where he lived with
+his squaws and children, to Michilimackinac, from Michilimackinac to the
+lower Mississippi, and from the eastern end of Lake Erie down to the
+Ohio, the messengers of this self-made emperor had secretly carried and
+unfolded his plan, which was to rise and attack all the English forts on
+the same day, and then to destroy all the English settlers, sparing no
+white people but the French.
+
+Two years before, an English army had come over to Canada and conquered
+it. That was a deathblow to French settlements in the middle west.
+They dared no longer resist English colonists pushing on them from
+the east. All that chain of forts stretching from Lake Erie down to the
+Ohio--Presqu' Isle, Le Boeuf, Venango, Ligonier--had been given up to
+the English, as well as western posts--Detroit, Fort Miami, Ouatanon on
+the Wabash, and Michilimackinac. The settlements on the Mississippi,
+however, still displayed the white flag of France. So large was the
+dominion in the New World which England now had the right to claim,
+that she was unable to grasp it all at once.
+
+[Illustration: The White Flag of France.]
+
+The Indians did not like the English, who treated them with contempt,
+would not offer them presents, and put them in danger of starvation
+by holding back the guns and ammunition, on which they had learned to
+depend, instead of their bows and arrows. For two years they had borne
+the rapid spread of English settlements on land which they still
+regarded as their own. These intruders were not like the French, who
+cared nothing about claiming land, and were always ready to hunt or
+dance with their red brethren.
+
+All the tribes were, therefore, eager to rise against the English, whom
+they wanted to drive back into the sea. Pontiac himself knew this could
+not be done; but he thought it possible, by striking the English forts
+all at once, to restore the French power and so get the French to help
+him in fighting back their common foe from spreading into the west.
+
+Pontiac was the only Indian who ever seemed to realize all the dangers
+which threatened his race, or to have military skill for organizing
+against them. His work had been secret, and he had taken pains to appear
+very friendly to the garrison of Detroit, who were used to the noise of
+Indian yelling and dancing. This fort was the central point of his
+operations, and he intended to take it next morning by surprise.
+
+Though La Motte Cadillac was the founder of a permanent settlement on
+the west shore of Detroit River, it is said that Greysolon du Lhut set
+up the first palisades there. About a hundred houses stood crowded
+together within the wooden wall of these tall log pickets, which were
+twenty-five feet high. The houses were roofed with bark or thatched with
+straw. The streets were mere paths, but a wide road went all around the
+town next to the palisades. Detroit was almost square in shape, with
+a bastion, or fortified projection, at each corner, and a blockhouse
+built over each gate. The river almost washed the front palisades, and
+two schooners usually anchored near to protect the fort and give it
+communication with other points. Besides the homes of settlers, it
+contained barracks for soldiers, a council-house, and a little church.
+
+About a hundred and twenty English soldiers, besides fur traders and
+Canadian settlers, were in this inclosure, which was called the fort, to
+distinguish it from the village of French houses up and down the shore.
+Dwellers outside had their own gardens and orchards, also surrounded by
+pickets. These French people, who tried to live comfortably among the
+English, whom they liked no better than the Indians did, raised fine
+pears and apples and made wine of the wild grapes.
+
+The river, emptying the water of the upper lakes into Lake Erie, was
+about half a mile wide. Sunlight next morning showed this blue strait
+sparkling from the palisades to the other shore, and trees and gardens
+moist with that dewy breath which seems to exhale from fresh-water seas.
+Indians swarmed early around the fort, pretending that the young men
+were that day going to play a game of ball in the fields, while Pontiac
+and sixty old chiefs came to hold a council with the English. More than
+a thousand of them lounged about, ready for action. The braves were
+blanketed, each carrying a gun with its barrel filed off short enough
+to be concealed under his blanket.
+
+About ten o'clock Pontiac and his chiefs crossed the river in birch
+canoes and stalked in Indian file, every man stepping in the tracks
+of the man before him, to the fort gates. The gates on the water side
+usually stood open until evening, for the English, contemptuously
+careless of savages, let squaws and warriors come and go at pleasure.
+They did not that morning open until Pontiac entered. He found himself
+and his chiefs walking betwixt files of armed soldiers. The gates were
+shut behind him.
+
+Pontiac was startled as if by a sting. He saw that some one had betrayed
+his plan to the officers. Even fur traders were standing under arms.
+To this day it is not known who secretly warned the fort of Pontiac's
+conspiracy; but the most reliable tradition declares it to have been a
+young squaw named Catherine, who could not endure to see friends whom
+she loved put to death.
+
+It flashed through Pontiac's mind that he and his followers were now
+really prisoners. The captain of Detroit was afterwards blamed for not
+holding the chief when he had him. The tribes could not rush through
+the closed gates at Pontiac's signal, which was to be the lifting of a
+wampum belt upside down, with all its figures reversed. But the cunning
+savage put on a look of innocence and inquired:--
+
+"My father," using the Indian term of respect, "why are so many of your
+young men standing in the street with their guns?"
+
+"They have been ordered out for exercise and discipline," answered the
+officer.
+
+A slight clash of arms and the rolling of drums were heard by the
+surprised tribes waiting in suspense around the palisades. They did not
+know whether they would ever see their leader appear again. But he came
+out, after going through the form of a council, mortified by his failure
+to seize the fort, and sulkily crossed the river to his lodge. All his
+plans to bring warriors inside the palisades were treated with contempt
+by the captain of Detroit. Pontiac wanted his braves to smoke the
+calumet with his English father.
+
+"You may come in yourself," said the officer, "but the crowd you have
+with you must remain outside."
+
+"I want all my young men," urged Pontiac, "to enjoy the fragrance of the
+friendly calumet."
+
+"I will have none of your rabble in the fort," said the officer.
+
+Raging like a wild beast, Pontiac then led his people in assault.
+He threw off every pretense of friendliness, and from all directions
+the tribes closed around Detroit in a general attack. Though it had
+wooden walls, it was well defended. The Indians, after their first
+fierce onset, fighting in their own way, behind trees and sheltered by
+buildings outside the fort, were able to besiege the place indefinitely
+with comparatively small loss to themselves; while the garrison, shut
+in almost without warning, looked forward to scarcity of provisions.
+
+All English people caught beyond the walls were instantly murdered. But
+the French settlers were allowed to go about their usual affairs unhurt.
+Queer traditions have come down from them of the pious burial they gave
+to English victims of the Indians. One old man stuck his hands out of
+his grave. The French covered them with earth. But next time they passed
+that way they saw the stiff, entreating hands, like pale fungi, again
+thrust into view. At this the horrified French settlers hurried to their
+priest, who said the neglected burial service over the grave, and so put
+the poor Englishman to rest, for his hands protruded no more.
+
+One of the absent schooners kept for the use of the fort had gone down
+river with letters and dispatches. Her crew knew nothing of the siege,
+and she narrowly escaped capture. A convoy of boats, bringing the usual
+spring supplies, was taken, leaving Detroit to face famine. Yet it
+refused to surrender, and, in spite of Pontiac's rage and his continual
+investment of the place, the red flag of England floated over that
+fortress all summer.
+
+Other posts were not so fortunate in resisting Pontiac's conspiracy.
+Fort Sandusky, at the west end of Lake Erie; Fort Ouatanon, on the
+Wabash, a little south of where Lafayette, in the state of Indiana, now
+stands; Fort Miami, Presqu' Isle, Le Boeuf, Venango, on the eastern
+border, and Michilimackinac, on the straits, were all taken by the
+Indians.
+
+At Presqu' Isle the twenty-seven soldiers went into the blockhouse of
+the fort and prepared to hold it, lining and making it bullet-proof.
+
+A blockhouse was built of logs, or very thick timber, and had no
+windows, and but one door in the lower story. The upper story projected
+several feet all around, and had loopholes in the overhanging, floor,
+through which the men could shoot down. Loopholes were also fixed in the
+upper walls, wide within, but closing to narrow slits on the outside.
+A sentry box or lookout was sometimes put at the top of the roof. With
+the door barred by iron or great beams of wood, and food and ammunition
+stored in the lower room, men could ascend a ladder to the second story
+of a blockhouse and hold it against great odds, if the besiegers did not
+succeed in burning them out.
+
+Presqu' Isle was at the edge of Lake Erie, and the soldiers brought
+in all the water they could store. But the attacking Indians made
+breastworks of logs, and shot burning arrows on the shingle roof.
+All the water barrels were emptied putting out fires. While some men
+defended the loopholes, others dug under the floor of the blockhouse and
+mined a way below ground to the well in the fort where Indians swarmed.
+Buildings in the inclosure were set on fire, but the defenders of the
+blockhouse kept it from catching the flames by tearing off shingles
+from the roof when they began to burn. The mining party reached the well,
+and buckets of water were drawn up and passed through the tunnel to the
+blockhouse. Greatly exhausted, the soldiers held out until next day,
+when, having surrendered honorably, they were all taken prisoners as
+they left the scorched and battered log tower. For savages were such
+capricious and cruel victors that they could rarely be depended upon to
+keep faith. Pontiac himself was superior to his people in such matters.
+If he had been at Presqu' Isle, the garrison would not have been seized
+after surrendering on honorable terms. However, these soldiers were not
+instantly massacred, as other prisoners had been in war betwixt French
+and English, when savage allies could not be restrained.
+
+Next to Detroit the most important post was Michilimackinac.
+
+This was not the island in the straits bearing that name, but a
+stockaded fort on the south shore of Michigan, directly across the
+strait from St. Ignace. To this day, searching along a beach of deep,
+yielding sand, so different from the rocky strands of the islands,
+you may find at the forest edge a cellar where the powder house stood,
+and fruit trees and gooseberry bushes from gardens planted there more
+than two hundred years ago.
+
+Michilimackinac, succeeding St. Ignace, had grown in importance, and was
+now a stockaded fort, having French houses both within and outside it,
+like Detroit. After Father Marquette's old mission had been abandoned
+and the buildings burned, another small mission was begun at L'Arbre
+Croche, not far west of Fort Michilimackinac, such of his Ottawas as
+were not scattered being gathered here. The region around also was full
+of Chippewas or Ojibwas.
+
+All these Indians hated the English. Some came to the fort and said to a
+young English trader named Alexander Henry, who arrived after the white
+flag was hauled down and the red one about to be hoisted:--
+
+"Englishman, although you have conquered the French, you have not
+conquered us. We are not your slaves. These lakes, these woods and
+mountains were left to us by our ancestors. They are our inheritance,
+and we will part with them to none!"
+
+Though these Ottawas and Chippewas were independent of those about
+Detroit, they had eagerly taken hold of Pontiac's war belt. The
+missionary priest was able for a while to restrain the Ottawas. The
+Chippewas, gathered in from their winter's hunting, determined to strike
+the first blow.
+
+On the fourth day of June, which was the English king's birthday, they
+came and invited the garrison to look at a game of ball, or baggattaway,
+which they were going to play on the long sandy beach, against some
+Sac Indians. The fortress gates stood open. The day was very warm and
+discipline was relaxed. Nobody noticed that squaws, flocking inside the
+fort, had tomahawks and scalping knives hidden under their blankets,
+though a few Englishmen afterward remembered that the squaws were
+strangely huddled in wrappings on a day hot for that climate.
+
+The young English trader, Alexander Henry, has left a careful account of
+the massacre at Fort Michilimackinac. He did not go out to see the ball
+game, because he had important letters to write and send by a canoe just
+starting to Canada. Officers and men, believing the red tribes friendly,
+lounged about unarmed. Whitewashed French houses shone in the sun, and
+the surge of the straits sounded peacefully on the beach. Nobody could
+dream that when the shouting Indians drove the ball back from the
+farthest stake, their cries would suddenly change to war whoops.
+
+At that horrid yell Henry sprang up and ran to a window of his house.
+He saw Chippewas filling the fort, and with weapons snatched from the
+squaws, cutting down and scalping Englishmen. He caught his own gun from
+its rack, expecting to hear the drum beat to arms. But the surprised
+garrison were unable even to sound an alarm.
+
+Seeing that not a Frenchman was touched, Henry slipped into the house of
+his next neighbor, a Canadian named Langlade. The whole family were at
+the front windows, looking at the horrible sights in the fort; but an
+Indian slave, a Pani, or Pawnee woman, beckoned to him and hid him in
+the attic, locking the door and carrying away the key.
+
+The attic probably had one or two of those tunnel-like dormer windows
+built in the curving roof of all French houses. Henry found a place
+where he could look out. He saw his countrymen slaughtered without being
+able to help them, and it was like a frightful nightmare from which
+there was to be no awakening. Presently the cry rose:--
+
+"All is finished!"
+
+Then the Indians crowded into Langlade's house and inquired whether any
+Englishmen were hid there. So thin was the attic floor of planks laid
+across joists, that Henry could hear every word.
+
+"I cannot say," answered the Frenchman. "You may examine for
+yourselves."
+
+Henry looked around the attic for some place to hide in. Moccasined feet
+were already coming upstairs. Savage hands shook the attic door, and
+impatient guttural voices demanded the key. While some one went for the
+key, Henry crept into a kind of tunnel made by a heap of birch-bark
+vessels, used in the maple-sugar season. The door was opening before he
+could draw himself quite out of sight, and though the pile was in a dark
+corner, he dreaded displacing some of the birch troughs and making a
+noise.
+
+The Indians trod so close to him he thought they must hear him breathe.
+Their bodies were smeared with blood, which could be seen through the
+dusk; and while searching they told Monsieur Langlade how many
+Englishmen they had killed and the number of scalps they had taken.
+
+Not finding any one, they went away and the door was again locked.
+Henry crept out of hiding. There was a feather bed on the floor and he
+stretched himself on it, so worn out by what he had seen and endured
+that he fell asleep.
+
+He was roused by the door opening again. Madame Langlade came in, and
+she was surprised and frightened at finding him. It was nearly night and
+a fierce summer rain beat upon the roof, dripping through cracks of the
+heat-dried bark. Madame Langlade had come to stop a leak. She told Henry
+that all the English except himself were killed, but she hoped he would
+escape. She brought him some water to drink.
+
+As darkness came on, he lay thinking of his desperate state. He was four
+hundred miles from Detroit, which he did not then know was besieged,
+and with all his stores captured or destroyed by the Indians, he had no
+provisions. He could not stay where he was, and if he ventured out, the
+first red man who met him would kill him.
+
+By morning the Indians came to the house inquiring for Henry, whom they
+had missed. Madame Langlade was in such fear that they might kill her
+children if they found Henry sheltered in the house, that she told her
+husband where he was and begged to have him given up. This the Frenchman
+at first refused to do; but he finally led the Indians again to the
+attic.
+
+Henry stood up, expecting to die.
+
+The Indians were all partially drunk and had satisfied themselves with
+slaughter. One of them seized Henry by the collar and lifted a knife to
+plunge into his breast. White man and red man looked intently at each
+other, and the savage, perhaps moved by the fearless despair in the
+young Englishman's eyes, concluded to take him prisoner. Henry began
+to think he could not be killed.
+
+He found that the captain and lieutenant of Michilimackinac were also
+alive and prisoners like himself. The missionary priest was doing all
+he could to restrain his maddened flock. At a council held between
+Chippewas and Ottawas, Henry was bought with presents by a Chippewa
+chief named Wawatam, who loved him, and who had been absent the day of
+the attack Wawatam put Henry in his canoe, carried him across the strait
+to Michilimackinac Island, and hid him in a cave, which is now called
+Skull Rock by the islanders, because Henry found ancient skulls and bones
+in the bottom of it. As the island was held sacred by the Indians, this
+was probably one of their old sepulchres. Its dome top is smothered in a
+tangle of evergreens and brush. There is a low, triangular entrance, and
+the hollow inside is shaped like an elbow. More than one island boy has
+since crept back to the dark bend where Henry lay hidden on the skulls,
+but only a drift of damp leaves can be found there now.
+
+The whole story of Alexander Henry's adventures, before he escaped and
+returned safely to Canada, is a wonderful chapter in western history.
+
+The Indians were not guilty of all the cruelties practiced in this war.
+Bounties were offered for savage scalps. One renegade Englishman, named
+David Owen, came back from adoption and marriage into a tribe, bringing
+the scalps of his squaw wife and her friends.
+
+Through the entire summer Pontiac was successful in everything except
+the taking of Detroit. He besieged it from May until October. With
+autumn his hopes began to dwindle. He had asked the French to help him,
+and refused to believe that their king had made a treaty at Paris,
+giving up to the English all French claims in the New World east of
+the Mississippi. His cause was lost. He could band unstable warriors
+together for a common good, but he could not control politics in Europe,
+nor defend a people given up by their sovereign, against the solidly
+advancing English race.
+
+[Illustration: North America at Close of French Wars, 1763.]
+
+But he was unwilling to own himself defeated while the French flag waved
+over a foot of American ground. This clever Indian, needing supplies to
+carry on his war, used civilized methods to get them on credit. He gave
+promissory notes written on birch bark, signed with his own totem, or
+tribe-mark--a picture of the otter. These notes were faithfully paid.
+
+When he saw his struggle becoming hopeless eastward, he drew off to the
+Illinois settlements to fight back the English from taking possession of
+Fort Chartres, the last French post. They might come up the Mississippi
+from New Orleans, or they might come down the Ohio. The Iroquois had
+always called the Mississippi the Ohio, considering that river which
+rose near their own country the great river, and the northern branch
+merely a tributary.
+
+Pontiac ordered the Illinois Indians to take up arms and stand by him.
+
+"Hesitate not," he said, "or I will destroy you as fire does the prairie
+grass! These are the words of Pontiac."
+
+They obeyed him. He sent more messengers down as far as New Orleans,
+keeping the tribes stirred against the English. He camped with his
+forces around Fort Chartres, cherishing it and urging the last French
+commandant, St. Ange de Bellerive, to take up arms with him, until that
+poor captain, tormented by the savage mob, and only holding the place
+until its English owners received it, was ready to march out with his
+few soldiers and abandon it.
+
+It is told that while Pontiac was leading his forlorn hope, he made his
+conquerors ridiculous. Major Loftus with a detachment of troops came up
+the Mississippi to take possession according to treaty. Pontiac turned
+him back. Captain Pittman came up the river. Pontiac turned him back.
+Captain Morris started from Detroit, and Pontiac squatted defiantly in
+his way. Lieutenant Frazer descended the Ohio. Pontiac caught him and
+shipped him to New Orleans by canoe. Captain Croghan was also stopped
+near Detroit. Both French and Spanish people roared with laughter at
+the many failures of the coming race to seize what had so easily been
+obtained by treaty.
+
+Two years and a half passed between Pontiac's attack on Detroit and
+the formal surrender of Fort Chartres. The great war chief's heart, with
+a gradual breaking, finally yielded before the steadily advancing and
+all-conquering people that were to dominate this continent.
+
+The second day of winter, late in the afternoon, Pontiac went into
+the fort unattended by any warrior, and without a word sat down near
+St. Ange de Bellerive in the officers' quarters. Both veteran soldier
+and old chief knew that Major Farmar, with a large body of troops,
+was almost in sight of Fort Chartres, coming from New Orleans. Perhaps
+before the low winter sun was out of sight, cannon mounted on one of
+the bastions would have to salute the new commandant. Sentinels on
+the mound of Fort Chartres could see a frosty valley, reaching to the
+Mississippi, glinting in the distance. That alluvial stretch was, in
+the course of years, to be eaten away by the river even to the bastions.
+The fort itself, built at such expense, would soon be abandoned by
+its conquerors, to sink, piecemeal, a noble and massive ruin. The
+dome-shaped powder house and stone quarters would be put to ignoble
+uses, and forest trees, spreading the spice of walnut fragrance, or the
+dense shadow of oaks, would grow through the very room where St. Ange
+and Pontiac sat. Indians, passing by, would camp in the old place,
+forgetting how the last hope of their race had clung to it.
+
+The Frenchman partly foresaw these changes, and it was a bitter hour to
+him. He wanted to have it over and to cross the Mississippi, to a town
+recently founded northward on the west shore, where many French settlers
+had collected, called St. Louis. This was then considered Spanish
+ground. But if the French king deserted his American colonies, why
+should not his American colonists desert him?
+
+"Father," spoke out Pontiac, with the usual Indian term of respect,
+"I have always loved the French. We have often smoked the calumet
+together, and we have fought battles together against misguided Indians
+and the English dogs."
+
+St. Ange de Bellerive looked at the dejected chief and thought of Le
+Moyne de Bienville, now an old man living in France, who was said to
+have wept and implored King Louis on his knees not to give up to the
+English that rich western domain which Marquette and Jolliet and La
+Salle and Tonty and many another Frenchman had suffered to gain, and
+to secure which he himself had given his best years.
+
+"The chief must now bury the hatchet," he answered quietly.
+
+"I have buried it," said Pontiac. "I shall lift it no more."
+
+"The English are willing to make peace with him, if he recalls all his
+wampum belts of war."
+
+Pontiac grinned. "The belts are more than one man can carry."
+
+"Where does the chief intend to go when he leaves this post?"
+
+Pontiac lifted his hand and pointed east, west, north, south.
+He would have no settled abode. It was a sign that he relinquished the
+inheritance of his fathers to an invader he hated. His race could not
+live under the civilization of the Anglo-Saxon. He would have struck
+out to the remotest wilderness, had he foreseen to what a burial place
+his continual clinging to the French would bring him. For Pontiac was
+assassinated by an Illinois Indian, whom an English trader had bribed,
+and his body lies somewhere to-day under the pavements of St. Louis,
+English-speaking men treading constantly over him. But if the dead
+chief's ears could hear, he would catch also the sound of the beloved
+French tongue lingering there.
+
+A cannon thundered from one of the bastions. St. Ange stood up, and
+Pontiac stood up with him.
+
+"The English are in sight," said St. Ange de Bellerive. "That salute is
+the signal for the flag of France to be lowered on Fort Chartres."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+ANNOUNCEMENTS
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+INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN HISTORY
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+EUROPEAN BEGINNINGS
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+12mo, cloth, xvi + 303 Pages, illustrated, 75 cents.
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+BLAISDELL'S
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+STORIES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY
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+
+HERO STORIES FROM AMERICAN HISTORY
+
+By Albert F. Blaisdell and Francis K. Ball, formerly Instructor in
+The Browne, and Nichols School, Cambridge, Mass. 12mo, cloth, 259
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+SHORT STORIES FROM AMERICAN HISTORY
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+The Browne and Nichols School, Cambridge, Mass. 12mo, cloth, 146
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+FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY THROUGH THE APPALACHIANS
+
+By ALBERT PERRY BRIGHAM
+
+Professor of Geology in Colgate University, Hamilton, N.Y.
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+12mo, cloth, 188 pages, with maps and illustrations, 50 cents.
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+  Catherwood: Heroes of the Middle West                   .50
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+  Collins: History of Vermont                             .80
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+  Davis: Under Six Flags. The Story of Texas              .50
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+  Faris: Real Stories from Our History                    .60
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+  Fassett: Colonial Life in New Hampshire                 .60
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+  Lane and Hill: American History in Literature           .50
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+  Montgomery: Heroic Ballads                              .50
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+  Pilgrims and Puritans                                   .60
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+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Heroes of the Middle West, by 
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+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type"
+    content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
+<meta content="pg2html (binary v0.18)" name="generator" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of
+    Heroes of the Middle West,
+    by Mary Hartwell Catherwood.
+</title>
+<style type="text/css">
+/*<![CDATA[*/
+    <!--
+ body { margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; }
+    p { text-indent:   1em;
+        margin-top:    .75em;
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+        margin-bottom: .75em; }
+    h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { text-align: center; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; }
+    hr.full { width: 100%; }
+    .quote { margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%; text-indent: 0em; font-size: 90%; }
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+    .sc { font-variant: small-caps; }
+    span.pagenum { position: absolute; left: 1%; right: 91%; font-size: 8pt; color: gray; background-color: inherit; }
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+
+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's Heroes of the Middle West, by Mary Hartwell Catherwood
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Heroes of the Middle West
+       The French
+
+Author: Mary Hartwell Catherwood
+
+Release Date: May 22, 2008 [EBook #25556]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEROES OF THE MIDDLE WEST ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, David Garcia and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div style="height: 6em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagei" name="pagei"></a>[i]</span></p>
+
+<a name="image-0000"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/cover.jpg"><img src="images/cover-s.jpg" width="300" height="480"
+alt="Front Cover" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<p><!--[Blank Page]-->&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="pageii" name="pageii"></a>[ii]</span></p>
+
+<a name="image-0001"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/frontis.jpg"><img src="images/frontis.png" width="350" height="555"
+alt="COUNT FRONTENAC." /></a>
+<br />
+COUNT FRONTENAC.
+<br />
+From a Statue at Quebec.
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="pageiii" name="pageiii"></a>[iii]</span></p>
+
+<a name="h2H_4_0002" id="h2H_4_0002"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h1>
+    HEROES OF THE
+<br />
+    MIDDLE WEST
+<br />
+    <small>The French</small>
+</h1>
+
+<h2>
+<small>BY</small>
+<br />
+MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD
+</h2>
+
+<p class="center">
+GINN AND COMPANY<br />
+<small>BOSTON · NEW YORK · CHICAGO · LONDON<br />
+ATLANTA · DALLAS · COLUMBUS · SAN FRANCISCO</small>
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="pageiv" name="pageiv"></a>[iv]</span></p>
+
+<p class="center">
+<span class="sc">Copyright, 1898</span>
+<br />
+<span class="sc">By MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD</span>
+<br />
+<small>ALL RIGHTS RESERVED</small>
+<br />
+317.8
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+<b>The Athenĉum Press</b>
+<br />
+<small>GINN AND COMPANY · PROPRIETORS · BOSTON · U. S. A.</small>
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagev" name="pagev"></a>[v]</span></p>
+
+<a name="h2H_PREF" id="h2H_PREF"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    PREFACE.
+</h2>
+<p>
+Let any one who thinks it an easy task attempt to cover the French
+discovery and occupation of the middle west, from Marquette and Jolliet
+to the pulling down of the French flag on Fort Chartres, vivifying men,
+and while condensing events, putting a moving picture before the eye.
+Let him prepare this picture for young minds accustomed only to the
+modern aspect of things and demanding a light, sure touch. Let him
+gather his material&mdash;as I have done&mdash;from Parkman, Shea, Joutel,
+Hennepin, St. Cosme, Monette, Winsor, Roosevelt&mdash;from state records,
+and local traditions richer and oftener more reliable than history;
+and let him hang over his theme with brooding affection, moulding and
+remoulding its forms. He will find the task he so lightly set himself
+a terribly hard and exhausting one, and will appreciate as he never
+before appreciated the labors of those who work in historic fields.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagevi" name="pagevi"></a>[vi]</span></p>
+
+<p><!--[Blank Page]-->&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagevii" name="pagevii"></a>[vii]</span></p>
+
+<a name="h2H_TOC" id="h2H_TOC"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CONTENTS.
+</h2>
+
+<table border="0" align="center" summary="Table of Contents">
+<tr><td>                  </td><td>                                          </td><td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right">    I.</td><td><span class="sc">The Discoverers of the Upper Mississippi</span>               </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2H_4_0005">  1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">   II.</td><td><span class="sc">Bearers of the Calumet</span>                                 </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2H_4_0006"> 19</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">  III.</td><td><span class="sc">The Man with the Copper Hand</span>                           </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2H_4_0007"> 44</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">   IV.</td><td><span class="sc">The Undespairing Norman</span>                                </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2H_4_0008"> 71</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">    V.</td><td><span class="sc">French Settlements</span>                                     </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2H_4_0009">102</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">   VI.</td><td><span class="sc">The Last Great Indian</span>                                  </td><td align="right"><a href="#h2H_4_0010">117</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="pageviii" name="pageviii"></a>[viii]</span></p>
+
+<p><!--[Blank Page]-->&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page1" name="page1"></a>[1]</span></p>
+
+<a name="h2H_4_0004" id="h2H_4_0004"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    HEROES OF THE MIDDLE WEST.
+</h2>
+
+<a name="h2H_4_0005" id="h2H_4_0005"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    I.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    THE DISCOVERERS OF THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+The 17th of May, 1673, Father Jacques Marquette, the missionary priest
+of St. Ignace, on what is now called the north shore of Michigan, and
+Louis Jolliet, a trader from Montreal, set out on a journey together.
+</p>
+<p>
+Huron and Ottawa Indians, with the priest left in charge of them, stood
+on the beach to see Marquette embark,&mdash;the water running up to their
+feet and receding with the everlasting wash of the straits. Behind them
+the shore line of St. Ignace was bent like a long bow. Northward, beyond
+the end of the bow, a rock rose in the air as tall as a castle. But very
+humble was the small mission station which Father Marquette had founded
+when driven with his flock from his post on the Upper Lakes by the
+Iroquois. A chapel of strong
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page2" name="page2"></a>[2]</span>
+
+                             cedar posts covered with bark, his own
+hut, and the lodges of his people were all surrounded by pointed
+palisades. Opposite St. Ignace, across a league or so of water, rose
+the turtle-shaped back of Michilimackinac Island, venerated by the
+tribes, in spite of their religious teaching, as a home of mysterious
+giant fairies who made gurgling noises in the rocks along the beach or
+floated vast and cloud-like through high pine forests. The evergreens
+on Michilimackinac showed as if newborn through the haze of undefined
+deciduous trees, for it was May weather, which means that the northern
+world had not yet leaped into sudden and glorious summer. Though the
+straits glittered under a cloudless sky, a chill lingered in the wind,
+and only the basking stone ledges reflected warmth. The clear elastic
+air was such a perfect medium of sight that it allowed the eye to
+distinguish open beach rims from massed forests two or three leagues
+away on the south shore, and seemed to bring within stone's throw those
+nearer islands now called Round and Bois Blanc.
+</p>
+<p>
+It must have wrung Marquette's heart to leave this region, which has
+an irresistible charm for all who come within its horizon. But he had
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page3" name="page3"></a>[3]</span>
+
+ long desired to undertake this journey for a double purpose. He wanted
+to carry his religion as far as possible among strange tribes, and he
+wanted to find and explore that great river of the west, about which
+adventurers in the New World heard so much, but which none had seen.
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0002"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure" style="float:right;">
+<a href="images/p003.jpg"><img src="images/p003.png" width="120" height="265"
+alt="Totem of the Illinois." /></a>
+<br />
+Totem of the Illinois.
+</div>
+
+<p>
+A century earlier, its channel southward had really been taken
+possession of by the Spaniards, its first discoverers. But they made no
+use of their discovery, and on their maps traced it as an insignificant
+stream. The French did not know whether this river flowed into the Gulf
+of California&mdash;which was called the Red Sea&mdash;or to the western ocean,
+or through Virginia eastward. Illinois Indians, visiting Marquette's
+mission after the manner of roving tribes, described the father of
+waters and its tributaries. Count Frontenac, the governor of Canada,
+thought the matter of sufficient importance to send Louis Jolliet with
+an outfit to join the missionary in searching for the stream.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page4" name="page4"></a>[4]</span></p>
+
+<p>
+The explorers took with them a party of five men. Their canoes, we are
+told, were of birch bark and cedar splints, the ribs being shaped from
+spruce roots. Covered with the pitch of yellow pine, and light enough
+to be carried on the shoulders of four men across portages, these canoes
+yet had toughness equal to any river voyage. They were provisioned with
+smoked meat and Indian corn. Shoved clear of the beach, they shot out
+on the blue water to the dip of paddles. Marquette waved his adieu.
+His Indians, remembering the dangers of that southern country, scarcely
+hoped to see him again. Marquette, though a young man, was of no such
+sturdy build as Jolliet. Among descendants of the Ottawas you may still
+hear the tradition that he had a "white face, and long hair the color
+of the sun" flowing to the shoulders of his black robe.
+</p>
+<p>
+The watching figures dwindled, as did the palisaded settlement. Hugging
+the shore, the canoes entered Lake Michigan, or, as it was then called,
+the Lake of the Illinois. All the islands behind seemed to meet and
+intermingle and to cover themselves with blue haze as they went down on
+the water. Priest and trader, their skins moist with the breath of the
+lake, each in
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page5" name="page5"></a>[5]</span>
+
+              his own canoe, faced silently the unknown world toward
+which they were venturing. The shaggy coast line bristled with
+evergreens, and though rocky, it was low, unlike the white cliffs of
+Michilimackinac.
+</p>
+<p>
+Marquette had made a map from the descriptions of the Illinois Indians.
+The canoes were moving westward on the course indicated by his map.
+He was peculiarly gifted as a missionary, for already he spoke six
+Indian languages, and readily adapted himself to any dialect. Marquette,
+the records tell us, came of "an old and honorable family of Laon," in
+northern France. Century after century the Marquettes bore high honors
+in Laon, and their armorial bearings commemorated devotion to the
+king in distress. In our own Revolutionary War it is said that three
+Marquettes fought for us with La Fayette. No young man of his time had
+a pleasanter or easier life offered him at home than Jacques Marquette.
+But he chose to devote himself to missionary labor in the New World,
+and had already helped to found three missions, enduring much hardship.
+Indian half-breeds, at what is now called the "Soo," on St. Mary's
+River, betwixt Lake Huron and Lake Superior, have a tradition that
+Father Marquette
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page6" name="page6"></a>[6]</span>
+
+                 and Father Dablon built their missionary station on
+a tiny island of rocks, not more than two canoe lengths from shore, on
+the American side. But men who have written books declare it was on the
+bank below the rapids.
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0003"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/p006.jpg"><img src="images/p006.png" width="200" height="90"
+alt="Autograph of Jolliet." /></a>
+<br />
+Autograph of Jolliet.
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Jolliet had come of different though not less worthy stock. He was
+Canadian born, the son of a wagon-maker in Quebec; and he had been well
+educated, and possessed an active, adventurous mind. He was dressed for
+this expedition in the tough buckskin hunting suit which frontiersmen
+then wore. But Marquette retained the long black cassock of the priest.
+Their five voyageurs&mdash;or trained woodsmen&mdash;in more or less stained
+buckskin and caps of fur, sent the canoes shooting over the water with
+scarcely a sound, dipping a paddle now on this side and now on that,
+Indian fashion; Marquette and Jolliet taking turns with them as the
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page7" name="page7"></a>[7]</span>
+
+ day progressed. For any man, whether voyageur, priest, or seignior,
+who did not know how to paddle a canoe, if occasion demanded, was at
+sore disadvantage in the New World.
+</p>
+<p>
+The first day of any journey, before one meets weariness or anxiety and
+disappointment, remains always the freshest in memory. When the sun went
+down, leaving violet shadows on the chill lake, they drew their boats
+on shore; and Pierre Porteret and another Frenchman, named Jacques,
+gathered driftwood to make a fire, while the rest of the crew unpacked
+the cargo. They turned each canoe on its side, propping the ends with
+sticks driven into the ground, thus making canopies like half-roofs to
+shelter them for the night.
+</p>
+<p>
+"The Sieur Jolliet says it is not always that we may light a camp-fire,"
+said Pierre Porteret to Jacques, as he struck a spark into his tinder
+with the flint and steel which a woodsman carried everywhere.
+</p>
+<p>
+"He is not likely to have one to-night, even in this safe cove,"
+responded Jacques, kneeling to help, and anxious for supper. "Look now
+at me; I know the Indian way to start a blaze by taking two pieces of
+wood and boring one into the other, rubbing it thus between my palms.
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page8" name="page8"></a>[8]</span>
+
+ It is a gift. Not many voyageurs can accomplish that."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Rub thy two stupid heads together and make a blaze," said another
+hungry man, coming with a kettle of lake water. But the fire soon
+climbed pinkly through surrounding darkness. They drove down two forked
+supports to hold a crosspiece, and hung the kettle to boil their hulled
+corn. Then the fish which had been taken by trolling during the day were
+dressed and broiled on hot coals.
+</p>
+<p>
+The May starlight was very keen over their heads in a dark blue sky
+which seemed to rise to infinite heights, for the cold northern night
+air swept it of every film. Their first delicious meal was blessed and
+eaten; and stretched in blankets, with their feet to the camp fire, the
+tired explorers rested. They were still on the north shore of what we
+now call the state of Michigan, and their course had been due westward
+by the compass. A cloud of Indian tobacco smoke rose from the lowly roof
+of each canoe, and its odor mingled with the sweet acrid breath of
+burning wood. Jolliet and the voyageurs had learned to use this dried
+brown weed, which all tribes held in great esteem and carried about with
+them in their rovings.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page9" name="page9"></a>[9]</span></p>
+
+<p>
+"If true tales be told of the water around the Bay of the Puans," one of
+the voyageurs was heard to say as he stretched himself under the canoe
+allotted to the men, "we may save our salt when we pass that country."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Have you ever heard, Father," Jolliet inquired of the missionary, "that
+the word Puan meant foul or ill-smelling instead of salty?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"I know," Marquette answered, "that salt has a vile odor to the Indians.
+They do not use it with their food, preferring to season that instead
+with the sugar they make from the maple tree. Therefore, the bay into
+which we are soon to venture they call the Bay of the Fetid, or
+ill-smelling salty country, on account of saline water thereabout."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Then why do the Winnebago tribe on this bay allow themselves to be
+called Puans?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"That has never been explained by the missionaries sent to that post,
+though the name seems to carry no reproach. They are well made and tall
+of stature. I find Wild Oats a stranger name&mdash;the Menomonies are Wild
+Oats Indians. Since the gospel has been preached to all these tribes for
+some years past, I trust we may find good Christians among them."
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page10" name="page10"></a>[10]</span></p>
+
+<p>
+"What else have you learned about the country?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Father Dablon told me that the way to the head of that river called
+Fox, up which we must paddle, is as hard as the way to heaven, specially
+the rapids. But when you arrive there it is a natural paradise."
+</p>
+<p>
+"We have tremendous labor before us," mused Jolliet. "Father, did you
+ever have speech with that Jean Nicollet, who, first of any Frenchman,
+got intimations of the great river?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"I never saw him."
+</p>
+<p>
+"There was a man I would have traveled far to see, though he was long a
+renegade among savages, and returned to the settlements only to die."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Heaven save this expedition from becoming renegade among savages by
+forgetting its highest object!" breathed Marquette.
+</p>
+<p>
+His companion smiled toward the pleasant fire-light. Jolliet had once
+thought of becoming a priest himself. He venerated this young apostle,
+only half a dozen years his senior. But he was glad to be a free
+adventurer, seeking wealth and honor; not foreseeing that though the
+great island of Anticosti in the Gulf of St. Lawrence would be given
+him for his services, he would die a poor and neglected man.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page11" name="page11"></a>[11]</span></p>
+
+<p>
+When, after days of steady progress, the expedition entered the Bay
+of Puans, now called Green Bay, and found the nation of Menomonies or
+Wild Oats Indians, Marquette was as much interested as Jolliet in the
+grain which gave these people their bread. It grew like rice, in marshy
+places, on knotted stalks which appeared above the water in June and
+rose several feet higher. The grain seed was long and slender and
+made plentiful meal. The Indians gathered this volunteer harvest in
+September, when the kernels were so ripe that they dropped readily into
+canoes pushed among the stalks. They were then spread out on lattice
+work and smoked to dry the chaff, which could be trodden loose when the
+whole bulk, tied in a skin bag, was put into a hollow in the ground made
+for that purpose. The Indians pounded their grain to meal and cooked it
+with fat.
+</p>
+<p>
+The Menomonies tried to prevent Marquette and Jolliet from going
+farther. They said the great river was dangerous, full of frightful
+monsters that swallowed both men and canoes; that there was a roaring
+demon in it who could be heard for leagues; and the heat was so intense
+in those southern countries through which it flowed, that if the
+Frenchmen escaped all
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page12" name="page12"></a>[12]</span>
+
+                      other dangers, they must die of that. Marquette
+told them his own life was nothing compared to the good word he wanted
+to carry to those southern tribes, and he laughed at the demon and
+instructed them in his own religion.
+</p>
+<p>
+The aboriginal tribes, by common instinct, tried from the first to keep
+the white man out of countries which he was determined to overrun and
+possess, regardless of danger.
+</p>
+<p>
+At the end of a voyage of thirty leagues, or about ninety miles, the
+explorers reached the head of the Bay of Puans, and a region thickly
+settled with Winnebagoes and Pottawotomies between the bay and Winnebago
+Lake, Sacs on Fox River, and Mascoutins, Kickapoos, and Miamis. Fox
+River, which they followed from the head of the bay, and of which the
+lake seemed only an expansion, was a rocky stream. A later traveler has
+told us that Fox River in its further extent is very crooked, and while
+seeming wide, with a boundary of hills on each hand, it affords but a
+slender channel in a marsh full of rushes and wild oats.
+</p>
+<p>
+The Kickapoos and Mascoutins were rude, coarse-featured Indians. Though
+the missionary exhorted them as seriously as he did their gentler
+neighbors, he could not help remarking
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page13" name="page13"></a>[13]</span>
+
+                                       to Jolliet that "the Miamis were
+better made, and the two long earlocks which they wore gave them a good
+appearance."
+</p>
+<p>
+It was the seventh day of June when the explorers arrived in this
+country of cabins woven of rushes; and they did not linger here.
+Frenchmen had never gone farther. They were to enter new lands untrodden
+by the white race. They were in what is now called the state of
+Wisconsin, where "the soil was good," they noted, "producing much corn;
+and the Indians gathered also quantities of plums and grapes." In these
+warmer lands the season progressed rapidly.
+</p>
+<p>
+Marquette and Jolliet called the chiefs together and told them that
+Jolliet was sent by the governor to find new countries, and Marquette
+had been commissioned of Heaven to preach. Making the chiefs a present,
+without which they would not have received the talk seriously, the
+explorers asked for guides to that tributary which was said to run into
+the great river.
+</p>
+<p>
+The chiefs responded with the gift of a rush mat for Marquette and
+Jolliet to rest on during their journey, and sent two young Miamis with
+them. If these kindly Indians disliked to set the expedition further on
+its way, they said nothing but very polite things about the hardihood
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page14" name="page14"></a>[14]</span>
+
+ of Frenchmen, who could venture with only two canoes, and seven in their
+party, on unknown worlds.
+</p>
+<p>
+The young Miamis, in a boat of their own, led out the procession the
+tenth morning of June. Taking up paddles, the voyageurs looked back
+at an assembled multitude&mdash;perhaps the last kindly natives on their
+perilous way&mdash;and at the knoll in the midst of prairies where hospitable
+rush houses stood and would stand until the inmates took them down and
+rolled them up to carry to hunting grounds, and at groves dotting those
+pleasant prairies where guests were abundantly fed.
+</p>
+<p>
+Three leagues up the marshy and oats-choked Fox River, constantly
+widening to little lakes and receding to a throat of a channel, brought
+the explorers to the portage, or carrying place. The canoes then had
+to be unloaded, and both cargo and boats carried overland to a bend of
+the Miscousing, which was the Indian name for Wisconsin River. "This
+portage," says a traveler who afterwards followed that way, "is half a
+league in length, and half of that is a kind of marsh full of mud." In
+wet seasons the head of Fox River at that time seemed not unlikely to
+find the Wisconsin, for Marquette has set
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page15" name="page15"></a>[15]</span>
+
+                                           it down in his recital that
+the portage was only twenty-seven hundred paces.
+</p>
+<p>
+When the two Miamis had helped to carry the goods and had set the French
+on the tributary of the great river, they turned back to their own
+country. Before the men entered the boats Marquette knelt down with
+them on the bank and prayed for the success of the undertaking. It was
+a lovely broad river on which they now embarked, with shining sands
+showing through the clear water, making shallows like tumbling discs
+of brilliant metal,&mdash;a river in which the canoes might sometimes run
+aground, but one that deceived the eye pleasantly, with islands all vine
+covered, so when a boat clove a way between two it was a guess how far
+the Wisconsin spread away on each side to shores of a fertile land.
+Oaks, walnuts, whitewood, and thorn trees crowded the banks or fell
+apart, showing prairies rolling to wooded hills. Deer were surprised,
+stretching their delicate necks down to drink at the margin. They looked
+up with shy large eyes at such strange objects moving on their stream,
+and shot off through the brush like red-brown arrows tipped with white.
+The moose planted its forefeet and stared stolidly, its broad horns set
+in defense.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page16" name="page16"></a>[16]</span></p>
+
+<p>
+"Sieur Jolliet," said the missionary, once when the canoes drew
+together, "we have now left the waters which flow into the great lakes
+and are discharged through the St. Lawrence past Quebec to the sea.
+We follow those that lead us into strange lands."
+</p>
+<p>
+"This river Miscousing on which we now are," returned Jolliet, "flows,
+as we see by our compass, to the southwestward. We know it is a branch
+of the great river. I am becoming convinced, Father, that the great
+river cannot discharge itself toward the east, as some have supposed."
+</p>
+<p>
+The explorers estimated the distance from the country of the Mascoutins
+to the portage to be three leagues, and from the portage to the mouth
+of the Miscousing forty leagues. This distance they covered in a week.
+Drawing their canoes to the shore at night, they pitched camp, varying
+the monotony of their stores with fish and game. Perhaps they had
+learned that wild grapes then budding were not really fit to eat until
+touched by frost. Pierre Porteret said in Marquette's hearing, "the
+Indians could make good wine of grapes and plums if they desired."
+</p>
+<p>
+The 17th of June, exactly one month from the day on which they had left
+St. Ignace mission,
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page17" name="page17"></a>[17]</span>
+
+                    the explorers paddled into a gentle clear river,
+larger than the Miscousing but not yet monstrous in width, which ran
+southward. High hills guarded the right-hand shore, and the left spread
+away in fair meadows. Its current was broken with many little islands,
+like the Miscousing, though on sounding, Jolliet found the water to
+be ten fathoms, or sixty feet, deep. The shores receding, and then
+drawing in, gave unequal and irregular width to the stream. But it was
+unmistakably the great river they had sought, named then as now by the
+Indians, Mississippi, though Marquette at once christened it Conception,
+and another Frenchman who came after him gave it the name of Colbert.
+It was the river of which Nicollet had brought hints from his wanderings
+among northwestern tribes: the great artery of the middle continent, or,
+as that party of explorers believed, of the entire west. Receiving into
+itself tributaries, it rolled, draining a mighty basin, to unknown seas.
+</p>
+<p>
+The first white men ventured forth upon its upper channel in two birch
+canoes. Five hardy voices raised a shout which was thrown back in an
+echo from the hills; five caps were whirled as high as paddles could
+raise them. But Marquette
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page18" name="page18"></a>[18]</span>
+
+                          said, "This is such joy as we cannot express!"
+The men in both canoes silenced themselves while he gave thanks for the
+discovery.
+</p>
+
+<!--[Blank Page]-->
+
+<a name="image-0004"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/p013.jpg"><img src="images/p013s.jpg" width="350" height="540"
+alt="FATHER JACQUES MARQUETTE." /></a>
+<br />
+FATHER JACQUES MARQUETTE.<br />
+From a Statue in the Capitol at Washington.
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page19" name="page19"></a>[19]</span></p>
+
+<a name="h2H_4_0006" id="h2H_4_0006"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    II.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    BEARERS OF THE CALUMET.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Moving down the Mississippi, league after league, the explorers noted
+first of all its solitude. Wigwam smoke could not be seen on either
+shore. Silence, save the breathing of the river as it rolled on its
+course, seemed to surround and threaten them with ambush. Still, day
+after day, the sweet and awful presence of the wilderness was their only
+company. Once Pierre Porteret dropped his paddle with a yell which was
+tossed about by echoing islands. A thing with a tiger's forehead and a
+wildcat's whiskered snout, holding ears and entire gray and black head
+above the water, swam for the boat. But it dived and disappeared; and
+the other voyageurs felt safe in laughing at him. Not long after,
+Jacques bellowed aloud as he saw a living tree glide under the canoe,
+jarring it from end to end. The voyageurs soon learned to know the huge
+sluggish catfish. They also caught plenty of sturgeon or shovel fish
+when they cast in their nets.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page20" name="page20"></a>[20]</span></p>
+
+<p>
+The river descended from its hilly cradle to a country of level
+distances. The explorers, seeing nothing of men, gave more attention to
+birds and animals. Wild turkeys with burnished necks and breasts tempted
+the hunters. The stag uttered far off his whistling call of defiance to
+other stags. And they began to see a shaggy ox, humped, with an enormous
+head and short black horns, and a mane hanging over low-set wicked eyes.
+Its body was covered with curly rough hair. They learned afterwards from
+Indians to call these savage cattle pisikious, or buffaloes. Herds of
+many hundreds grazed together, or, startled, galloped away, like thunder
+rolling along the ground.
+</p>
+<p>
+The explorers kindled very little fire on shore to cook their meals,
+and they no longer made a camp, but after eating, pushed out and
+anchored, sleeping in their canoes. Every night a sentinel was set to
+guard against surprise. By the 25th of June they had passed through
+sixty leagues of solitude. The whole American continent was thinly
+settled by native tribes, many in name indeed, but of scant numbers.
+The most dreaded savages in the New World were the Iroquois or Five
+Nations, living south of Lake Ontario. Yet they were never able to
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page21" name="page21"></a>[21]</span>
+
+ muster more than about twenty-two hundred fighting men.
+</p>
+<p>
+The canoes were skirting the western bank, driven by the current, when
+one voyageur called to another:
+</p>
+<p>
+"My scalp for the sight of an Indian!"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Halt!" the forward paddler answered. "Look to thy scalp, lad, for here
+is the Indian!"
+</p>
+<p>
+There was no feathered head in ambush, but they saw moccasin prints in
+the low moist margin and a path leading up to the prairie.
+</p>
+<p>
+Marquette and Jolliet held the boats together while they consulted.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Do you think it wise to pass by without searching what this may mean,
+Father?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"No, I do not. We might thus leave enemies behind our backs to cut off
+our return. Some Indian village is near. It would be my counsel to
+approach and offer friendship."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Shall we take the men?" debated Jolliet. "Two of them at least should
+stay to guard the canoes."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Let them all stay to guard the canoes. If we go unarmed and unattended,
+we shall not raise suspicion in the savages' minds."
+</p>
+<p>
+"But we may raise suspicion in our own minds."
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page22" name="page22"></a>[22]</span></p>
+
+<p>
+Marquette laughed.
+</p>
+<p>
+"The barbarous people on this unexplored river have us at their mercy,"
+he declared, "We can at best do little to defend ourselves."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Let us reconnoitre," said Jolliet.
+</p>
+<p>
+Taking some of the goods which they had brought along for presents,
+Jolliet bade the men wait their return and climbed the bank with the
+missionary. The path led through prairie grass, gay at that season
+with flowers. The delicate buttercup-like sensitive plant shrank from
+their feet in wet places. Neither Frenchman had yet seen the deadly
+rattlesnake of these southern countries, singing as a great fly might
+sing in a web, dart out of its spotted spiral to fasten a death bite
+upon a victim. They walked in silence, dreading only the human beings
+they were going to meet. When they had gone about two leagues, the
+path drew near the wooded bank of a little stream draining into the
+Mississippi which they had scarcely noticed from the canoes. There
+they saw an Indian village, and farther off, up a hill, more groups of
+wigwams. They heard the voices of children, and nobody suspected their
+approach.
+</p>
+<p>
+Jolliet and Marquette halted. Not knowing
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page23" name="page23"></a>[23]</span>
+
+                                          how else to announce their
+presence, they shouted together as loud as they could shout. The savages
+ran out of their wigwams and darted about in confusion until they saw
+the two motionless white men. The long black cassock of Marquette had
+instant effect upon them. For their trinkets and a few garments on their
+bodies showed that they had trafficked with Europeans.
+</p>
+<p>
+Four old Indians, slowly and with ceremony, came out to meet the
+explorers, holding up curious pipes trimmed with many kinds of feathers.
+As soon as they drew near, Marquette called out to them in Algonquin:
+</p>
+<p>
+"What tribe is this?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"The Illinois," answered the old man. Being a branch of the great
+Algonquin family, which embraced nearly all northern aboriginal nations,
+with the notable exception of the Iroquois, these people had a dialect
+which the missionary could understand. The name Illinois meant "The
+Men."
+</p>
+<p>
+Marquette and Jolliet were led to the principal lodge. Outside the door,
+waiting for them, stood another old Indian like a statue of wrinkled
+bronze. For he had stripped himself to do honor to the occasion, and
+held up
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page24" name="page24"></a>[24]</span>
+
+        his hands to screen his face from the sun, making graceful and
+dignified gestures as he greeted the strangers.
+</p>
+<p>
+"How bright is the sun when you come to see us, O Frenchmen! Our lodges
+are all open to you."
+</p>
+<p>
+The visitors were then seated in the wigwam, and the pipe, or calumet,
+offered them to smoke, all the Indians crowding around and saying:
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0005"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/p024.jpg"><img src="images/p024.png" width="350" height="125"
+alt="Calumet." /></a>
+<br />
+Calumet.
+</div>
+
+<p>
+"You do well to visit us, brothers."
+</p>
+<p>
+Obliged to observe this peace ceremony, Marquette put the pipe to his
+lips, but Jolliet, used to the tobacco weed, puffed with a good will.
+</p>
+<p>
+The entire village then formed a straggling procession, gazing at the
+Frenchmen, whom they guided farther to the chief's town. He also met
+them standing with a naked retinue at his door, and the calumet was
+again smoked.
+</p>
+<p>
+The Illinois lodges were shaped like the rounded cover of an emigrant
+wagon, high, and very long, having an opening left along
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page25" name="page25"></a>[25]</span>
+
+                                                         the top for
+the escape of smoke. They were made of rush mats, which the women wove,
+overlapped as shingles on a framework of poles. Rush mats also carpeted
+the ground, except where fires burned in a row along the middle. Each
+fire was used by two families who lived opposite, in stalls made of
+blankets. The ends of the lodge had flaps to shut out the weather, but
+these were left wide open to the summer sun. During visits of ceremony a
+guest stood where he could be seen and heard by all who could crowd into
+the wigwam. But when the Illinois held important councils they made a
+circular inclosure, and built a camp-fire in the center. Many families
+and many fires filled a long wigwam, though Jolliet and Marquette were
+lodged with the chief, who had one for himself and his household.
+</p>
+<p>
+Whitening embers were sending threads of smoke towards a strip of blue
+sky overhead when the missionary stood up to explain his errand in the
+crowded inclosure, dividing his talk into four parts with presents.
+By the first gift of cloth and beads he told his listeners that the
+Frenchmen were voyaging in peace to visit nations on the river. By the
+second he said:
+</p>
+<p>
+"I declare to you that God, your Creator, has
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page26" name="page26"></a>[26]</span>
+
+                                              pity on you, since, when
+you have been so long ignorant of him, he wishes to become known to you.
+I am sent on his behalf with this design. It is for you to acknowledge
+and obey him."
+</p>
+<p>
+By the third gift they were informed that the chief of the French had
+spread peace and overcome the Iroquois. And the last begged for all the
+information they could give about the sea and intervening nations.
+</p>
+<p>
+When Marquette sat down, the chief stood up and laid his hand on the
+head of a little slave, prisoner from another tribe.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I thank you, Blackgown," he said, "and you, Frenchman, for taking so
+much pains to come and visit us. The earth has never been so beautiful,
+nor the sun so bright, as to-day; never has the river been so calm and
+free from rocks, which your canoes removed as they passed! Never has our
+tobacco had so fine a flavor, nor our corn appeared so beautiful as we
+find it to-day. Here is my son. I give him to you that you may know my
+heart. Take pity on us and all our nation. You know the Great Spirit who
+made all: you speak to him and hear him; ask him to give us life and
+health and come and dwell with us."
+</p>
+<p>
+When the chief had presented his guests with
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page27" name="page27"></a>[27]</span>
+
+                                             the Indian boy, and again
+offered the calumet, he urged them, with belts and garters of buffalo
+wool, brilliantly dyed, to go no farther down the great river, on
+account of dangers. These compliments being ended, a feast was brought
+in four courses. First came a wooden dish of sagamity or corn-meal
+boiled in water and grease. The chief took a buffalo-horn spoon and fed
+his guests as if they had been little children; three or four spoonfuls
+he put in Marquette's mouth and three or four spoonfuls in Jolliet's.
+Three fish were brought next, and he picked out the bones with his own
+fingers, blew on the food to cool it, and stuffed the explorers with
+all he could make them accept. It was their part to open their mouths
+as young birds do. The third course was that most delicate of Indian
+dishes, a fine dog; but seeing that his guests shrank from this, the
+chief ended the meal with buffalo meat, giving them the fattest parts.
+</p>
+<p>
+The Illinois were at that time on the west side of the Mississippi,
+because they had been driven from their own country on the Illinois
+River by the Iroquois. The Illinois nation was made up of several united
+tribes: Kaskaskias, Peorias, Kahokias, Tamaroas, and Moingona.
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page28" name="page28"></a>[28]</span>
+
+ Flight
+scattered them, and these were only a few of their villages. They
+afterwards returned to their own land. Their chief wore a scarf or belt
+of fur crossing his left shoulder, encircling his waist and hanging in
+fringe. Arm and leg bands ornamented him, and he also had knee rattles
+of deer hoofs. Paint made of colored clays streaked his face. This
+attractive creature sent the Indian crier around, beating a drum of deer
+hide stretched over a pot, to proclaim the calumet dance in honor of the
+explorers.
+</p>
+<p>
+Marquette and Jolliet were led out in the prairie to a small grove
+which sheltered the assembly from the afternoon sun. Even the women
+left their maize fields and the beans, melons, and squashes that they
+were cultivating, and old squaws dropped rush braiding, and with
+papooses swarming about their knees, followed. The Illinois were nimble,
+well-formed people, skillful with bow and arrow. They had, moreover,
+some guns among them, obtained from allies who had roved and traded with
+the French. Young braves imitated the gravity of their elders at this
+important ceremony. The Illinois never ate new fruits or bathed at the
+beginning of summer, without first dancing the calumet.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page29" name="page29"></a>[29]</span></p>
+
+<p>
+A large gay mat of rushes was spread in the center of the grove, and
+the warrior selected to dance put his god, or manitou&mdash;some tiny carven
+image which he carried around his person and to which he prayed&mdash;on
+the mat beside a beautiful calumet. Around them he spread his bow and
+arrows, his war club, and stone hatchet. The pipe was made of red rock
+like brilliantly polished marble, hollowed to hold tobacco. A stick
+two feet long, as thick as a cane, formed the stem. For the dance these
+pipes were often decked with gorgeous scarlet, green, and iridescent
+feathers, though white plumes alone made them the symbol of peace, and
+red quills bristled over them for war.
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0006"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/p029.jpg"><img src="images/p029.png" width="350" height="100"
+alt="War Club." /></a>
+<br />
+War Club.
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Young squaws and braves who were to sing, sat down on the ground in a
+group near the mat; but the multitude spread in a great circle around
+it. Men of importance before taking their seats on the short grass, each
+in turn lifted the calumet, which was filled, and blew a little
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page30" name="page30"></a>[30]</span>
+
+ smoke
+on the manitou. Then the dancer sprang out, and, with graceful curvings
+in time to the music, seized the pipe and offered it now to the sun and
+now to the earth, made it dance from mouth to mouth along the lines of
+spectators, with all its fluttering plumes spread. The hazy sun shone
+slanting among branches, tracing a network of flickering leaf shadows
+on short grass; and liquid young voices rising and falling chanted,
+</p>
+<p class="quote">
+  "Nanahani, nanahani, nanahani, Naniango!"
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0007"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/p030.jpg"><img src="images/p030.png" width="350" height="105"
+alt="Stone Hatchet." /></a>
+<br />
+Stone Hatchet.
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The singers were joined by the Indian drum; and at that another dancer
+sprang into the circle and took the weapons from the mat to fight with
+the principal dancer, who had no defense but the calumet. With measured
+steps and a floating motion of the body the two advanced and attacked,
+parried and retreated, until the man with the pipe drove his enemy from
+the ring. Papooses of a dark brick-red color watched with glistening
+black eyes the
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page31" name="page31"></a>[31]</span>
+
+               last part of the dance, which celebrated victory. The
+names of nations fought, the prisoners taken, and all the trophies
+brought home were paraded by means of the calumet.
+</p>
+<p>
+The chief presented the dancer with a fine fur robe when he ended; and,
+taking the calumet from his hand, gave it to an old man in the circle.
+This one passed it to the next, and so it went around the huge ring
+until all had held it. Then the chief approached the white men.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Blackgown," he said, "and you, Frenchman, I give you this peace-pipe
+to be your safeguard wherever you go among the tribes. It shall be
+feathered with white plumes, and displaying it you may march fearlessly
+among enemies. It has power of life and death, and honor is paid to it
+as to a manitou. Blackgown, I give you this calumet in token of peace
+between your governor and the Illinois, and to remind you of your
+promise to come again and instruct us in your religion."
+</p>
+<p>
+The explorers slept soundly all night in the chief's lodge, feeling as
+safe as among Christian Indians of the north, who stuck thorns in a
+calendar to mark Sundays and holy days. Next morning the chief went with
+several hundred of his people to escort them to their canoes;
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page32" name="page32"></a>[32]</span>
+
+                                                              but it
+was three o'clock in the afternoon before the voyageurs, dropping down
+stream, saw the last of the friendly tribe.
+</p>
+<p>
+Day after day the boats moved on without meeting other inhabitants.
+Mulberries, persimmons, and hazelnuts were found on the shores. They
+passed the mouth of the Illinois River without knowing its name, or
+that it flowed through lands owned by the tribe that had given them
+the peace-pipe. Farther on, the Mississippi made one of its many bends,
+carrying them awhile directly eastward, and below great rocks like
+castles. As the canoes ran along the foot of this east shore, some of
+the voyageurs cried out. For on the face of the cliff far up were two
+painted monsters in glaring red, green, and black; each as large as a
+calf, with deer horns, blood-colored eyes, tiger beard, a human face,
+and a body covered with scales. Coiled twice around the middle, over the
+head, and passing between the hind legs of each, extended a tail that
+ended like a fish. So startling was this sight, which seemed a banner
+held aloft heralding unseen dangers, that the men felt threatened by a
+demon. But Marquette laughed at them and beckoned for the canoes to be
+brought together.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page33" name="page33"></a>[33]</span></p>
+
+<p>
+"What manner of thing is this, Sieur Jolliet?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"A pair of manitous, evidently. If we had Indians with us, we should see
+them toss a little tobacco out as an offering in passing by."
+</p>
+<p>
+"I cannot think," said Marquette, "that any Indian has been the
+designer. Good painters in France would find it hard to do as well.
+Besides this, the creatures are so high upon the rock that it was hard
+to get conveniently at them to paint them. And how could such colors be
+mixed in this wilderness?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"We have seen what pigments and clays the Illinois used in daubing
+themselves. These wild tribes may have among them men with natural skill
+in delineating," said Jolliet.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I will draw them off," Marquette determined, bringing out the papers on
+which he set down his notes; and while the men stuck their paddles in
+the water to hold the canoes against the current, he made his drawing.
+</p>
+<p>
+One of the monsters seen by the explorers remained on those rocks until
+the middle of our own century. It was called by the Indians the Piasa.
+More than two centuries of beating winter storms had not effaced the
+brilliant picture when it was quarried away by a stupidly
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page34" name="page34"></a>[34]</span>
+
+                                                          barbarous
+civilization. The town of Alton, in the state of Illinois, is a little
+south of that rock where the Piasa dragons were seen.
+</p>
+<p>
+As the explorers moved ahead on glassy waters, they looked back, and the
+line of vision changing, they saw that the figures were cut into the
+cliff and painted in hollow relief.
+</p>
+<p>
+They were still talking about the monsters when they heard the roar of a
+rapid ahead, and the limpid Mississippi turned southward on its course.
+It was as if they had never seen the great river until this instant.
+For a mighty flood, rushing through banks from the west, yellow with
+mud, noisy as a storm, eddying islands of branches, stumps, whole trees,
+took possession of the fair stream they had followed so long. It shot
+across the current of the Mississippi in entering so that the canoes
+danced like eggshells and were dangerously forced to the eastern bank.
+Afterwards they learned that this was the Pekitanoüi, or, as we now call
+it, the Missouri River, which flows into the Mississippi not far above
+the present city of St. Louis; and that by following it to its head
+waters and making a short portage across a prairie, a man might in time
+enter the Red or Vermilion Sea of California.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page35" name="page35"></a>[35]</span></p>
+
+<p>
+Having slipped out of the Missouri's reach, the explorers were next
+threatened by a whirlpool among rocks before they reached the mouth of
+Ouaboukigou, the Ohio River. They saw purple, red, and violet earths,
+which ran down in streams of color when wet, and a sand which stained
+their paddles like blood. Tall canes began to feather the shore, and
+mosquitoes tormented them as they pressed on through languors of heat.
+Jolliet and Marquette made awnings of sails which they had brought as a
+help to the paddles. They were floating down the current of the muddy,
+swollen river when they saw Indians with guns on the east shore. The
+voyageurs dropped their paddles and seized their own weapons. Marquette
+stood up and spoke to the Indians in Huron. They made no answer. He held
+up the white calumet. Then they began to beckon, and when the party drew
+to land, they made it clear that they had themselves been frightened
+until they saw the Blackrobe holding the calumet. A long-haired tribe,
+somewhat resembling the Iroquois, but calling themselves Tuscaroras;
+they were rovers, and had axes, hoes, knives, beads, and double glass
+bottles holding gunpowder, for which they had traded with white people
+eastward.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page36" name="page36"></a>[36]</span></p>
+
+<p>
+They fed the French with buffalo meat and white plums, and declared it
+was but a ten days' journey to the sea. In this they were mistaken, for
+it was more than a thousand miles to the Gulf of Mexico.
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0008"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/p036.jpg"><img src="images/p036.png" width="350" height="120"
+alt="Wampum Girdle." /></a>
+<br />
+Wampum Girdle.
+</div>
+
+<p>
+To each tribe as he passed, Marquette preached his faith by the belt of
+the prayer. For each he had a wampum girdle to hold while he talked, and
+to leave for a remembrance. His words without a witness would be
+forgotten.
+</p>
+<p>
+Three hundred miles farther the explorers ventured, and had nearly
+reached the mouth of the Arkansas River, floating on a wide expanse of
+water between lofty woods, when they heard wild yelling on the west
+shore, and saw a crowd of savages pushing out huge wooden canoes to
+surround them. Some swam to seize the Frenchmen, and a war club was
+thrown over their heads. Marquette held up the peace-pipe, but the wild
+young braves in the water paid no
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page37" name="page37"></a>[37]</span>
+
+                                  attention to it. Arrows were ready
+to fly from all sides, and Marquette held the peace-pipe on high and
+continually prayed. At once old Indians restrained the young ones. In
+their turmoil they had not at first seen the calumet; but two chiefs
+came directly out to bring the strangers ashore.
+</p>
+<p>
+Not one of the missionary's six languages was understood by these
+Indians. He at last found a man who spoke a little Illinois, and Jolliet
+and he were able to explain their errand. He preached by presents, and
+obtained a guide to the next nation.
+</p>
+<p>
+On that part of the river where the French came to a halt, the Spanish
+explorer De Soto was said to have died two hundred years before. In this
+region the Indians had never seen snow, and their land yielded three
+crops a year. Their pots and plates were of baked earth, and they kept
+corn in huge gourds, or in baskets woven of cane fibers. They knew
+nothing of beaver skins; their furs were the hides of buffaloes.
+Watermelons grew abundantly in their fields. Though they had large
+wigwams of bark, they wore no clothing, and hung beads from their
+pierced noses and ears.
+</p>
+<p>
+These Akamsea, or Arkansas Indians showed
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page38" name="page38"></a>[38]</span>
+
+                                          traits of the Aztecs under
+Spanish dominion; for what is now the state of Texas was then claimed
+by Spain. Marquette and Jolliet held a council. They were certain that
+the great river discharged itself into the Gulf of Mexico. If they
+ventured farther, they might fall into the hands of Spaniards, who would
+imprison them; or they might be killed by fiercer tribes than any yet
+encountered, and in either case their discoveries would be lost. So they
+decided to turn back.
+</p>
+<p>
+All day the Arkansas feasted them with merciless savage hospitality, and
+it was not polite to refuse food or the attention of rocking. Two stout
+Indians would seize a voyageur between them and rock him back and forth
+for hours. If the motion nauseated him, that was his misfortune.
+</p>
+<p>
+Pierre Porteret crept out behind one of the bark lodges looking very
+miserable in the fog of early morning. His companion on many a long
+journey, never far out of his shadow, sat down to compare experiences.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Did they rock thee all night, Pierre?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"They rocked me all night, Jacques. I can well endure what most men can,
+but this is carrying politeness too far."
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page39" name="page39"></a>[39]</span></p>
+
+<p>
+"I was not so favored. They would have saved you if they had killed the
+rest of us. And they would have saved the good father, no doubt, since
+the chief came and danced the calumet before him."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Were these red cradle-rockers intending to make an end of us in the
+night?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"So the chief says; but he broke up the council, and will set us safely
+on our journey up river to-day."
+</p>
+<p>
+"I am glad of that," said Pierre. "Father Marquette hath not the
+strength of the Sieur Jolliet for such rude wanderings. These southern
+mists, and torturing insects, and clammy heats, and the bad food have
+worked a great change in him."
+</p>
+<p>
+"We have been gone but two months from the Mission of St. Ignace," said
+Jacques. "They have the bigness of years."
+</p>
+<p>
+"And many more months that have the bigness of years will pass before we
+see it again."
+</p>
+<p>
+They grew more certain of this, when, after toiling up the current
+through malarial nights and sweltering days, the explorers left the
+Mississippi and entered the river Illinois. There, above Peoria Lake,
+another Illinois town of seventy-four lodges was found, and these
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page40" name="page40"></a>[40]</span>
+
+ Kaskaskias so clung to the Blackrobe that he promised to come back
+and teach them. From the head waters of the Illinois a portage was
+made to Lake Michigan, and the French returned to the Bay of the Puans
+alongshore. They had traveled over twenty-five hundred miles, and
+accomplished the object of their journey.
+</p>
+<p>
+Jolliet, with his canoe of voyageurs, his maps and papers, and the young
+Indian boy given him by the Illinois chief, went on to Montreal. His
+canoe was upset in the rapids of Lachine just above Montreal, and he
+lost two men, the Indian boy, his papers, and nearly everything except
+his life. But he was able to report to the governor all that he had seen
+and done.
+</p>
+<p>
+Marquette lay ill, at the Bay of the Puans, of dysentery, brought on by
+hardship; and he was never well again. Being determined, however, to go
+back and preach to the tribe on the Illinois River, he waited all winter
+and all the next summer to regain his strength. He carefully wrote out
+and sent to Canada the story of his discoveries and labors. In autumn,
+with Pierre Porteret and the voyageur Jacques, he ventured again to the
+Illinois. Once he became so ill they were obliged to stop and build him
+a cabin in the wilderness, at the risk of being snowed
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page41" name="page41"></a>[41]</span>
+
+                                                       in all winter.
+It was not until April that he reached what he called his Mission of the
+Immaculate Conception, on the Illinois River, through snow, and water
+and mud, hunger and misery. He preached until after Easter, when, his
+strength being exhausted, Pierre and Jacques undertook to carry him home
+to the Mission of St. Ignace. Marquette had been two years away from his
+palisaded station on the north shore, and nine years in the New World.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was the 19th of May, and Pierre and Jacques were paddling their canoe
+along the east side of that great lake known now as Michigan. A creek
+parted the rugged coast, and dipping near its shallow mouth they looked
+anxiously at each other.
+</p>
+<p>
+"What shall we do?" whispered Jacques.
+</p>
+<p>
+"We must get on as fast as we can," answered Pierre.
+</p>
+<p>
+They were gaunt and weather-beaten themselves from two years' tramping
+the wilderness. But their eyes dwelt most piteously on the dying man
+stretched in the bottom of the canoe. His thin fingers held a cross.
+His white face and bright hair rested on a pile of blankets. Pierre and
+Jacques felt that no lovelier, kinder being than this scarcely breathing
+missionary would
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page42" name="page42"></a>[42]</span>
+
+                 ever float on the blue water under that blue sky.
+</p>
+<p>
+He opened his eyes and saw the creek they were slipping past, and a
+pleasant knoll beside it, and whispered:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+"There is the place of my burial."
+</p>
+<p>
+"But, Father," pleaded Pierre, "it is yet early in the day. We can take
+you farther."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Carry me ashore here," he whispered again.
+</p>
+<p>
+So they entered the creek and took him ashore, building a fire and
+sheltering him as well as they could. There a few hours afterward he
+died, the weeping men holding up his cross before him, while he thanked
+the Divine Majesty for letting him die a poor missionary. When he could
+no longer speak, they repeated aloud the prayers he had taught them.
+</p>
+<p>
+They left him buried on that shore with a large cross standing over his
+grave. Later his Indians removed his bones to the Mission of St. Ignace,
+with a procession of canoes and a priest intoning. They were placed
+under the altar of his own chapel. If you go to St. Ignace, you may see
+a monument now on that spot, and people have believed they traced the
+foundation of the old bark chapel. But the spot where he first lay was
+long venerated.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page43" name="page43"></a>[43]</span></p>
+
+<p>
+A great fur trader and pioneer named Gurdon Hubbard made this record
+about the place, which he visited in 1818:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+"We reached Marquette River, about where the town of Ludington now
+stands on the Michigan shore. This was where Father Marquette died,
+about one hundred and forty years before, and we saw the remains of a
+red-cedar cross, erected by his men at the time of his death to mark his
+grave; and though his remains had been removed to the Mission, at Point
+St. Ignace, the cross was held sacred by the voyageurs, who, in passing,
+paid reverence to it, by kneeling and making the sign of the cross. It
+was about three feet above the ground, and in a falling condition. We
+reset it, leaving it out of the ground about two feet, and as I never
+saw it after, I doubt not that it was covered by the drifting sands of
+the following winter, and that no white man ever saw it afterwards."
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page44" name="page44"></a>[44]</span></p>
+
+<a name="h2H_4_0007" id="h2H_4_0007"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    III.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    THE MAN WITH THE COPPER HAND.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+One day at the end of August, when Marquette's bones had lain under
+his chapel altar nearly two years and a half, the first ship ever seen
+upon the lakes was sighted off St. Ignace. Hurons and Ottawas, French
+traders, and coureurs de bois, or wood-rangers, ran out to see the
+huge winged creature scudding betwixt Michilimackinac Island and Round
+Island. She was of about forty-five tons' burden. Five cannon showed
+through her port-holes, and as she came nearer, a carved dragon was seen
+to be her figurehead; she displayed the name Griffin and bore the white
+flag of France. The priest himself felt obliged to receive her company,
+for three Récollet friars, in the gray robe of St. Francis, appeared on
+the deck. But two men, one in a mantle of scarlet and gold, and the
+other in white and gold French uniform, were most watched by all eyes.
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0009"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/p044.jpg"><img src="images/p044s.jpg" width="400" height="240"
+alt="THE BUILDING OF THE GRIFFIN." /></a>
+<br />
+THE BUILDING OF THE GRIFFIN.<br />
+From the Original Engraving in Father Hennepin's "Nouvelle Découverte," Amsterdam, 1704.
+</div>
+
+<!--[Blank Page]-->
+
+<p>
+The ship fired a salute, and the Indians howled with terror and started
+to run; then
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page45" name="page45"></a>[45]</span>
+
+             turned back to see her drop her sails and her anchor, and
+come up in that deep crescent-shaped bay. She had weathered a hard storm
+in Lake Huron; but the men who handled her ropes were of little interest
+to coureurs de bois on shore, who watched her masters coming to land.
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0010"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure" style="float: right;">
+<a href="images/p045.jpg"><img src="images/p045s.jpg" width="250" height="285"
+alt="La Salle." /></a>
+<br />
+La Salle.
+</div>
+
+<p>
+"It is the Sieur de la Salle in the scarlet mantle," one coureur de bois
+said to another. "And this is the ship he hath been building at Niagara.
+First one hears that creditors have seized his fort of Frontenac, and
+then one beholds him sailing here in state, as though naught on earth
+could daunt him."
+</p>
+<p>
+"I would like service with him," said the other coureur de bois.
+</p>
+<p>
+His companion laughed.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Service with La Salle means the hardest
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page46" name="page46"></a>[46]</span>
+
+                                         marching and heaviest labor
+a voyageur ever undertook. I have heard he is himself tough as iron. But
+men hereabouts who have been in his service will take to the woods when
+they hear he has arrived; traders that he sent ahead with goods. If he
+gets his hand on them after he finds they have squandered his property,
+it will go hard with them."
+</p>
+<p>
+"He has a long gray-colored face above his broad shoulders. I have heard
+of this Sieur Robert Cavelier de la Salle ever since he came to the
+province more than ten years ago, but I never saw him before. Is it true
+that Count Frontenac is greatly bound to him?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"So true that Sieur de la Salle thereby got favor at court. It was at
+court that a prince recommended to him yon swart Italian in white and
+gold that he brought with him on his last voyage from France. Now, there
+is a man known already throughout the colony by reason of his hand."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Which hand?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"The right one."
+</p>
+<p>
+"I see naught ailing that. He wears long gauntlets pulled well over both
+wrists."
+</p>
+<p>
+"His left hand is on his sword hilt. Doth he not hold the right a little
+stiffly?"
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page47" name="page47"></a>[47]</span></p>
+
+<p>
+"It is true. The fingers are not bent."
+</p>
+<p>
+"They never will be bent. It is a hand of copper."
+</p>
+<p>
+"How can a man with a copper hand be of service in the wilderness?"
+</p>
+<p>
+The first ranger shrugged. "That I know not. But having been maimed in
+European wars and fitted with a copper hand, he was yet recommended to
+Sieur de la Salle."
+</p>
+<p>
+"But why hath an Italian the uniform of France?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"He is a French officer, having been exiled with his father from his own
+country."
+</p>
+<p>
+The coureur de bois, who had reached the settlement later than his
+companion, grunted.
+</p>
+<p>
+"One would say thou wert of the Griffin crew thyself, with the latest
+news from Quebec and Montreal."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Not I," laughed the first one. "I have only been in the woods with
+Greysolon du Lhut, who knows everything."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Then he told thee the name of this Italian with the copper hand?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Assuredly. This Italian with the copper hand is Sieur Greysolon du
+Lhut's cousin, and his name is Henri de Tonty."
+</p>
+<p>
+"I will say this for Monsieur Henri de
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page48" name="page48"></a>[48]</span>
+
+                                       Tonty: a better made man never
+stepped on the strand at St. Ignace."
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0011"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure" style="float: left;">
+<a href="images/p048.png"><img src="images/p048s.png" width="150" height="90"
+alt="Autograph of Tonty." /></a>
+<br />
+Autograph of Tonty.
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Greysolon du Lhut was the captain of coureurs de bois in the northwest.
+No other leader had such influence with the lawless and daring. When
+these men were gathered in a settlement, spending what they had earned
+in drinking and gaming, it was hard to restrain them within civilized
+bounds. But when they took service to shoulder loads and march into the
+wilderness, the strongest hand could not keep them from open rebellion
+and desertion. There were few devoted and faithful voyageurs, such
+as Pierre Porteret and Jacques had proved themselves in following
+Marquette. The term of service was usually two years; but at the first
+hardship some might slip away in the night, even at the risk of
+perishing before they reached the settlements.
+</p>
+<p>
+St. Ignace made a procession behind La Salle's party and followed them
+into the chapel to hear mass&mdash;French traders, Ottawas, Hurons, coureurs
+de bois, squaws, and children. When the priest turned from the altar, he
+looked down on complexions ranging from the natural pallor of
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page49" name="page49"></a>[49]</span>
+
+                                                              La Salle
+to the black-red of the most weather-beaten native.
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0012"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure" style="float: right;">
+<a href="images/p049.jpg"><img src="images/p049.png" width="250" height="245"
+alt="Totem of the Hurons." /></a>
+<br />
+Totem of the Hurons.
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The Hurons then living at St. Ignace, whom Father Marquette had led
+there from his earlier mission, afterwards wandered to Detroit and
+Sandusky, the priests having decided to abandon St. Ignace and burn the
+chapel. In our own day we hear of their descendants as settled in the
+Indian Territory, the smallest but wealthiest band of all transplanted
+Indians.
+</p>
+<p>
+Having entered the lake region with impressive ceremonies, which he
+well knew how to employ before ignorant men and savages, La Salle threw
+aside his splendor, and, with his lieutenant, put on the buckskins for
+marching and canoe journeying into the wilderness. Some of the men he
+had sent up the lakes with goods nearly a year before had collected
+a large store of furs, worth much money; and these he
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page50" name="page50"></a>[50]</span>
+
+                                                      determined to
+send back to Canada on the Griffin, to satisfy his creditors and to give
+him means for carrying on his plans. He had meant, after sending Tonty
+on to the Illinois country, to return to Canada and settle his affairs.
+But it became necessary, as soon as he landed at St. Ignace, to divide
+his party and send Tonty with some of the men to Sault Ste. Marie after
+plunderers who had made off with his goods. The others would doubtless
+desert if left any length of time without a leader. It was a risk also
+to send his ship back to the colony without standing guard over its
+safety himself. But he greatly needed the credit which its load of furs
+would give him. So he determined to send it manned as it was, with
+orders to return to the head of Lake Michigan as soon as the cargo was
+safely landed; while he voyaged down the west side of the lake, and
+Tonty, returning from the Sault, came by the east shore. The reunited
+party would then have the Griffin as a kind of floating fort or refuge,
+and by means of it keep easily in communication with the settlements.
+</p>
+<p>
+La Salle wanted to build a chain of forts from Niagara to the mouth of
+the Mississippi, when that could be reached. Around each of these, and
+protected by them, he foresaw settlements
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page51" name="page51"></a>[51]</span>
+
+                                          of French and Indians, and
+a vast trade in furs and the products of the undeveloped west. Thus
+France would acquire a province many times its own size. The undertaking
+was greater than conquering a kingdom. Nobody else divined at that time
+the wonderful promise of the west as La Salle pictured it. Little
+attention had been paid to the discoveries of Marquette and Jolliet.
+France would have got no benefit from them had not La Salle so soon
+followed on the track of missionary and trader, verified what had been
+done, and pushed on.
+</p>
+<p>
+He had seen Jolliet twice. The first time they met near Niagara, when
+both were exploring; the second time, Jolliet is said to have stopped
+with his maps and papers before they were lost at Fort Frontenac, on
+his return from his Mississippi voyage. La Salle, then master of Fort
+Frontenac, must have examined these charts and journals with interest.
+It does not appear that the two men were ever very friendly. Jolliet
+was too easily satisfied to please La Salle; he had not the ability to
+spread France's dominion over the whole western wilderness, and that was
+what La Salle was planning to do before Marquette and Jolliet set out
+for the Mississippi.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page52" name="page52"></a>[52]</span></p>
+
+<p>
+St. Ignace became once more the starting point of an important
+expedition, though La Salle, before sending the Griffin back, sailed in
+her as far as the Bay of Puans, where many of his furs were collected.
+He parted with this good ship in September. She pointed her prow
+eastward, and he turned south with fourteen men in four canoes, carrying
+tools, arms, goods, and even a blacksmith's forge.
+</p>
+<p>
+Through storm, and famine, and peril with Indians they labored down the
+lake, and did not reach the place where they were to meet Tonty until
+the first of November. La Salle had the three Récollet friars with him.
+Though one was a man sixty-four years old, he bore, with his companions,
+every hardship patiently and cheerfully. The story of priests who helped
+to open the wilderness and who carried religion to savages is a
+beautiful chapter of our national life.
+</p>
+<p>
+Tonty was not at the place where they were to meet him. This was the
+mouth of the St. Joseph River, which La Salle named the Miamis. The men
+did not want to wait, for they were afraid of starving if they reached
+the Illinois country after the Indians had scattered to winter hunting
+grounds. But La Salle would not go on
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page53" name="page53"></a>[53]</span>
+
+                                      until Tonty appeared. He put the
+men to work building a timber stockade, which he called Fort Miamis;
+thus beginning in the face of discouragement his plan of creating a line
+of fortifications.
+</p>
+<p>
+Tonty, delayed by lack of provisions and the need of hunting, reached
+Fort Miamis with his men in twenty days. But the Griffin did not come
+at all. More than time enough had passed for her to reach Fort Niagara,
+unload her cargo, and return. La Salle watched the lake constantly for
+her sails. He began to be heavy-hearted for her, but he dared wait no
+longer; so, sending two men back to meet and guide her to this new post,
+he moved on.
+</p>
+<p>
+Eight canoes carried his party of thirty-three people. They ascended the
+St. Joseph River to find a portage to the head waters of the Illinois.
+This brought them within the present state of Indiana; and when they had
+reached that curve of the river where South Bend now stands, they left
+St. Joseph to grope for the Theakiki, or Kankakee, a branch called by
+some Indians the Illinois itself.
+</p>
+<p>
+La Salle became separated from the party on this portage, eagerly and
+fearlessly scouring the woods for the river's beginning. Tonty camped
+and waited for him, fired guns, called, and
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page54" name="page54"></a>[54]</span>
+
+                                            searched; but he was gone
+all night and until the next afternoon. The stars were blotted overhead,
+for a powder of snow thickened the air, weirdly illuminating naked trees
+in the darkness, but shutting in his vision. It was past midnight when
+he came in this blind circle once more to the banks of the St. Joseph,
+and saw a fire glinting through dense bushes.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Now I have reached camp," thought La Salle, and he fired his gun to let
+his people know he was approaching. Echoes rolled through the woods.
+Without waiting for a shot in reply he hurried to the fire. No person
+was near it. The descending snow hissed, caught in the flames. Here was
+a home hearth prepared in the wilderness, and no welcome to it but
+silence. La Salle called out in every Indian language he knew. Dead
+branches grated, and the stream rustled betwixt its edges of ice. A heap
+of dry grass was gathered for a bed under a tree by the fire, and its
+elastic top showed the hollow where a man had lain. La Salle put some
+more wood on the fire, piled a barricade of brush around the bed, and
+lay down in a place left warm by some strolling Indian whom his gun had
+frightened away. He slept until morning. In the afternoon he found his
+own camp.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page55" name="page55"></a>[55]</span></p>
+
+<p>
+From the first thread of the Kankakee oozing out of swamps to the Indian
+town on the Illinois River where Marquette had done his last missionary
+work, was a long canoe journey. It has been said the rivers of the New
+World made its rapid settlement possible; for they were open highways,
+even in the dead of winter guiding the explorer by their frozen courses.
+</p>
+<p>
+The Illinois tribe had scattered to their hunting, and the lodges stood
+empty. La Salle's men were famished for supplies, so he ventured to open
+the covered pits in which the Indians stored their corn. Nothing was
+more precious than this hidden grain; but he paid for what he took when
+he reached the Indians. This was not until after New Year's day. He had
+descended the river as far as that expansion now called Peoria Lake.
+</p>
+<p>
+The Illinois, after their first panic at the appearance of strange white
+men, received La Salle's party kindly, fed all with their own fingers,
+and, as they had done with Jolliet and Marquette when those explorers
+passed them on the Mississippi, tried to coax their guests to go no
+farther. They and other Indians who came to the winter camp told such
+tales of danger on that great river about which the French knew
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page56" name="page56"></a>[56]</span>
+
+ so little, that six of La Salle's men deserted in one night.
+</p>
+<p>
+This caused him to move half a league beyond the Illinois camp,
+where, on the southern bank, he built a palisaded fort and called it
+Crèvec&oelig;ur. He was by this time convinced that the Griffin was lost.
+Whether she went down in a storm, or was scuttled and sunk by those to
+whom he intrusted her, nothing was ever heard of her again. The furs he
+had sent to pay his creditors never in any way reached port. If they
+escaped shipwreck, they were stolen by the men who escaped with them.
+</p>
+<p>
+Nothing could bend La Salle's resolution. He meant in some way to
+explore the west through which the southern Mississippi ran. But the
+loss of the Griffin hurt him sorely. He could not go on without more
+supplies; and having no vessel to bring them, the fearful necessity was
+before him of returning on foot and by canoe to Fort Frontenac to bring
+them himself.
+</p>
+<p>
+He began to build another ship on the Illinois River, and needed cables
+and rigging for her. This vessel being partly finished by the first of
+March, he left her and Fort Crèvec&oelig;ur in Tonty's charge, and, taking
+four Frenchmen
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page57" name="page57"></a>[57]</span>
+
+               and a Mohegan hunter, set out on the long and terrible
+journey to Fort Frontenac.
+</p>
+<p>
+The Italian commandant with the copper hand could number on its metal
+fingers the only men to be trusted in his garrison of fifteen. One
+Récollet, Father Louis Hennepin, had been sent with two companions by
+La Salle to explore the upper Mississippi. Father Ribourde and Father
+Membré remained. The young Sieur de Boisrondet might also be relied
+on, as well as a Parisian lad named Étienne Renault, and their servant
+L'Esperance. As for the others, smiths, shipwrights, and soldiers were
+ready to mutiny any moment. They cared nothing about the discovery of
+the west. They were afraid of La Salle when he was with them; and,
+though it is said no man could help loving Tonty, these lawless fellows
+loved their own wills better.
+</p>
+<p>
+The two men that La Salle had sent to look for the Griffin arrived at
+Fort Crèvec&oelig;ur, bearing a message from him, having met him on the
+way. They had no news, but he wrote a letter and sent them on to Tonty.
+He urged Tonty to take part of the garrison and go and fortify a great
+rock he had noticed opposite the Illinois town. Whatever La Salle wanted
+done Tonty was anxious to accomplish, though separating
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page58" name="page58"></a>[58]</span>
+
+                                                        himself from
+Crèvec&oelig;ur, even for a day, was a dangerous experiment. But he took
+some men and ascended the river to the rock. Straight-way smiths,
+shipwrights, and soldiers in Crèvec&oelig;ur, seizing powder, lead, furs,
+and provisions, deserted and made their way back to Canada. Boisrondet,
+the friars, and L'Esperance hurried to tell Tonty; and thus Fort
+Crèvec&oelig;ur and the partly finished ship had to be abandoned. Tonty
+dispatched four men to warn La Salle of the disaster. He could neither
+hold this position nor fortify the rock in the midst of jealous savages
+with two friars, one young officer, a lad, and one servant. He took the
+forge, and tools, and all that was left in Crèvec&oelig;ur into the very
+heart of the Indian village and built a long lodge, shaped like the
+wigwams of the Illinois. This was the only way to put down their
+suspicion. Seeing that the Frenchmen had come to dwell among them, the
+Indians were pleased, and their women helped with poles and mats to
+build the lodge.
+</p>
+<p>
+For by this time, so long did it take to cover distances in the
+wilderness, spring and summer were past, and the Illinois were dwelling
+in their great town, nearly opposite the rock which La Salle desired to
+have fortified. Tonty often
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page59" name="page59"></a>[59]</span>
+
+                            gazed at it across the river, which flows
+southwestward there, with a ripple that does not break into actual
+rapids. The yellow sandstone height, rising like a square mountain out
+of the shore, was tufted with ferns and trees. No man could ascend it
+except at the southeast corner, and at that place a ladder or a rope was
+needed by the unskillful. It had a flat, grassy top shut in by trees,
+through which one could see the surrounding country as from a tower.
+A ravine behind it was banked and floored with dazzling white sand, and
+walled at the farther side by a timbered cliff rising to a prairie.
+With a score of men Tonty could have held this natural fortress against
+any attack. Buckets might be rigged from overhanging trees to draw up
+water from the river. Provisions and ammunition only were needed for a
+garrison. This is now called Starved Rock, and is nearly opposite the
+town of Utica. Some distance up the river is a longer ridge, yet known
+as Buffalo Rock, easy of ascent at one end, up which the savages are
+said to have chased buffaloes; and precipitous at the other, down which
+the frightened beasts plunged to death.
+</p>
+<p>
+The tenth day of September a mellow autumn sun shone on maize fields
+where squaws labored,
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page60" name="page60"></a>[60]</span>
+
+                      on lazy old braves sprawled around buffalo robes,
+gambling with cherry stones, and on peaceful lodges above which the blue
+smoke faintly wavered. It was so warm the fires were nearly out. Young
+warriors of the tribes were away on an expedition; but the populous
+Indian town swarmed with its thousands.
+</p>
+<p>
+Father Ribourde and Father Membré had that morning withdrawn a league up
+the river to make what they called a retreat for prayer and meditation.
+The other Frenchmen were divided between lodge and garden.
+</p>
+<p>
+Near this living town was the town of the dead, a hamlet of scaffolds,
+where, wrapped in skins, above the reach of wolves, Illinois Indians of
+a past generation slept their winters and summers away. Crows flapped
+across them and settled on the corn, causing much ado among the papooses
+who were set to shout and rattle sticks for the protection of the crop.
+</p>
+<p>
+Suddenly a man ran into camp, having just leaped from the canoe which
+brought him across the river. When he had talked an instant old braves
+bounded to their feet with furious cries, the tribes flocked out of
+lodges, and women and children caught the panic and came screeching.
+</p>
+<p>
+"What is the matter?" exclaimed Tonty,
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page61" name="page61"></a>[61]</span>
+
+                                       unable to understand their rapid
+jargon. The Frenchmen drew together with the instinct of uniting in
+peril, and, led by old men, the Indian mob turned on them.
+</p>
+<p>
+"What is it?" cried Tonty.
+</p>
+<p>
+"The Iroquois are coming! The Iroquois are coming to eat us up! These
+Frenchmen have brought the Iroquois upon us!"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Will you stand off!" Tonty warned them. And every brave in the town
+knew what they called the medicine hand in his right gauntlet, powerful
+and hard as a war club. They stood in awe of it as something more than
+human. He put his followers behind him. The Frenchmen crowded back to
+back, facing the savage crowd. Hampered by his imperfect knowledge of
+their language, he hearkened intently to the jangle of raging voices,
+his keen dark eyes sweeping from face to face. Tonty was a man of
+impressive presence, who inspired confidence even in Indians. They held
+back from slaying him and his people, but fiercely accused him. Young
+braves dragged from the French lodge the goods and forge saved from Fort
+Crèvec&oelig;ur, and ran yelling to heave everything into the river.
+</p>
+<p>
+"The Iroquois are your friends! The Iroquois
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page62" name="page62"></a>[62]</span>
+
+                                             are at peace with the
+French! But they are marching here to eat us up!"
+</p>
+<p>
+"We know nothing about the Iroquois!" shouted Tonty. "If they are coming
+we will go out with you to fight them!"
+</p>
+<p>
+Only half convinced, but panic-stricken from former encounters with a
+foe who always drove them off their land, they turned from threatening
+Tonty and ran to push out their canoes. Into these were put the women
+and children, with supplies, and all were paddled down river to an
+island, where guards could be set. The warriors then came back and
+prepared for fighting. They greased their bodies, painted their faces,
+made ready their weapons, and danced and howled to excite one another
+to courage. All night fires along shore, and leaping figures, were
+reflected in the dark river.
+</p>
+<p>
+About dawn, scouts who had been sent to watch the Iroquois came running
+with news that the enemy were almost in sight across the prairie on the
+opposite side, slipping under cover of woods along a small branch of the
+Illinois River. They had guns, pistols, and swords, and carried bucklers
+of rawhide. The scouts declared that a Jesuit priest and La Salle
+himself led them.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page63" name="page63"></a>[63]</span></p>
+
+<p>
+The Frenchmen's lives seemed hardly a breath long. In the midst of
+maddened, screeching savages Tonty and his men once more stood back to
+back, and he pushed off knives with his copper hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Do you want to kill yourselves?" he shouted. "If you kill us, the
+French governor will not leave a man of you alive! I tell you Monsieur
+de la Salle is not with the Iroquois, nor is any priest leading them!
+Do you not remember the good Father Marquette? Would such men as he
+lead tribes to fight one another? If all the Iroquois had stolen French
+clothes, you would think an army of Jesuits and Messieurs de la Salle
+were coming against you!"
+</p>
+<p>
+"But some one has brought the Iroquois upon us!"
+</p>
+<p>
+"I told you before we know nothing about the Iroquois! But we will go
+with you now to fight them!"
+</p>
+<p>
+At that the Illinois put their knives in their belts and ran shouting to
+throw themselves into the canoes. Warfare with American Indians was
+always the rush of a mob, where every one acted for himself without
+military order.
+</p>
+<p>
+"It is well the good friars are away making their retreat," said Tonty
+to Boisrondet and
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page64" name="page64"></a>[64]</span>
+
+                  Étienne Renault while they paddled as fast as they
+could across the river with the Illinois. "Poor old L'Esperance must be
+making a retreat, too."
+</p>
+<p>
+"I have not myself seen him since last night," Boisrondet remembered.
+</p>
+<p>
+"He put out in a canoe when the Indians were embarking their women and
+children," said Étienne Renault. "I saw him go."
+</p>
+<p>
+And so it proved afterwards. But L'Esperance had slipped away to bring
+back Father Membré and Father Ribourde to tend the wounded and dying.
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0013"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/p064.jpg"><img src="images/p064.png" width="350" height="150"
+alt="Long House of the Iroquois." /></a>
+<br />
+Long House of the Iroquois.
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Having crossed the river and reached the prairie, Tonty and his allies
+saw the Iroquois. They came prancing and screeching on their savage
+march, and would have been ridiculous if they had not been appalling.
+These Hodenosaunee, or People of the Long House, as they
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page65" name="page65"></a>[65]</span>
+
+                                                         called
+themselves, were the most terrible force in the New World. Tonty saw
+at once it would go hard with the Illinois nation. Never at any time
+as hardy as their invaders, who by frequent attacks had broken their
+courage, and weakened by the absence of their best warriors, they
+wavered in their first charge.
+</p>
+<p>
+He put down his gun and offered to carry a peace belt to the Iroquois to
+stop the fight. The Illinois gladly gave him a wampum girdle and sent a
+young Indian with him. Boisrondet and Étienne Renault also walked at his
+side into the open space between two barbaric armies. The Iroquois did
+not stop firing when he held up and waved the belt in his left hand.
+Bullets spattered on the hummocky sod of the prairie around him.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Go back," Tonty said to Boisrondet and Renault and the young Indian.
+"What need is there of so many? Take the lad back, Boisrondet."
+</p>
+<p>
+They hesitated to leave him.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Go back!" he repeated sharply, so they turned, and he ran on alone. The
+Iroquois guns seemed to flash in his face. It was like throwing himself
+among furious wolves. Snarling lips and snaky eyes and twisting sinuous
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page66" name="page66"></a>[66]</span>
+
+ bodies made nightmares around him. He felt himself seized; a young
+warrior stabbed him in the side. The knife glanced on a rib, but blood
+ran down his buckskins and filled his throat.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Stop!" shouted an Iroquois chief. "This is a Frenchman; his ears are
+not pierced."
+</p>
+<p>
+Tonty's swarthy skin was blanching with the anguish of his wound, which
+turned him faint. His black hair clung in rings to a forehead wet with
+cold perspiration. But he held the wampum belt aloft and spat the blood
+out of his mouth.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Iroquois! The Illinois nation are under the protection of the French
+king and Governor Frontenac! I demand that you leave them in peace!"
+</p>
+<p>
+A young brave snatched his hat and lifted it on the end of a gun.
+At that the Illinois began a frenzied attack, thinking he was killed.
+Tonty was spun around as in a whirlpool. He felt a hand in his hair and
+a knife at his scalp.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I never," he thought to himself, "was in such perplexity in my life!"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Burn him!" shouted some.
+</p>
+<p>
+"But he is French!" others cried. "Let him go!"
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page67" name="page67"></a>[67]</span></p>
+
+<p>
+Through all the uproar he urged the peace belt and threatened them with
+France. The wholesome dread which Governor Frontenac had given to that
+name had effect on them. Besides, they had not surprised the Illinois,
+and if they declared a truce, time would be gained to consider their
+future movements.
+</p>
+<p>
+The younger braves were quieted, and old warriors gave Tonty a belt
+to carry back to the Illinois. He staggered across the prairie. Father
+Ribourde and Father Membré, who had just reached the spot, ran to meet
+him, and supported him as he half fainted from loss of blood.
+</p>
+<p>
+Tonty and his allies withdrew across the river. But the Iroquois,
+instead of retreating, followed. Seeing what must happen, Tonty thought
+it best for the Illinois to give up their town and go to protect their
+women and children, while he attempted as long as possible to keep the
+invaders at bay. Lodges were set on fire, and the Illinois withdrew
+quietly down river, leaving some of their men in the bluffs less than a
+league from the town, to bring them word of the result. The Frenchmen,
+partially rebuilding their own lodge, which had been wrecked when their
+goods were thrown in the
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page68" name="page68"></a>[68]</span>
+
+                         river, stood their ground in the midst of
+insulting savages.
+</p>
+<p>
+For the Iroquois, still determined on war and despoiling, opened maize
+pits, scattering and burning the grain; trampled corn in the fields; and
+even pulled the dead off their scaffolds. They were angry at the French
+for threatening them with that invisible power of France, and bent on
+chasing the Illinois. Yet Tonty was able to force a kind of treaty
+between them and the retreating nation, through the men left in the
+bluffs. As soon as they had made it, however, they began canoes of elm
+bark, to follow the Illinois down river.
+</p>
+<p>
+Two or three days passed, while the Frenchmen sat covering the invaded
+tribe's retreat. They scarcely slept at night. Their enemies prowled
+around their lodge or celebrated dances on the ruins of the town.
+The river flowed placidly, and the sun shone on desolation and on
+the unaltered ferny buttresses of the great rock and its castellated
+neighbors. Tonty heard with half delirious ears the little creatures
+which sing in the grass and fly before man, but return to their singing
+as soon as he passes by. The friars dressed and tended his fevered
+wound, and when the Iroquois sent for him to
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page69" name="page69"></a>[69]</span>
+
+                                             come to a council, Father
+Membré went with him.
+</p>
+<p>
+Within the rude fort of posts and poles saved from ruined lodges, which
+the Iroquois had built for themselves, adding a ruff of freshly chopped
+trees, the two white men sat down in a ring of glowering savages. Six
+packs of beaver skins were piled ready for the oration; and the orator
+rose and addressed Tonty.
+</p>
+<p>
+With the first two the Indian spokesman promised that his nation would
+not eat Count Frontenac's children, those cowardly Illinois.
+</p>
+<p>
+The next was a plaster to heal Tonty's wound.
+</p>
+<p>
+The next was oil to anoint him and the Récollets, so their joints would
+move easily in traveling.
+</p>
+<p>
+The next said that the sun was bright.
+</p>
+<p>
+And the sixth and last pack ordered the French to get up and leave
+the country.
+</p>
+<p>
+When the speaker sat down, Tonty came to his feet and looked at the
+beaver skins piled before them. Then he looked around the circle of hard
+weather-beaten faces and restless eyes, and thanked the Iroquois for
+their gift.
+</p>
+<p>
+"But I would know," said Tonty, "how soon
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page70" name="page70"></a>[70]</span>
+
+                                           you yourselves intend to
+leave the country and let the Illinois be in peace?"
+</p>
+<p>
+There was a growl, and a number of the braves burst out with the
+declaration that they intended to eat Illinois flesh first.
+</p>
+<p>
+Tonty raised his foot and kicked the beaver skins from him. In that very
+way they would have rejected a one-sided treaty themselves. Up they
+sprang with drawn knives and drove him and Father Membré from the fort.
+</p>
+<p>
+All night the French stood guard for fear of being surprised and
+massacred in their lodge. At daybreak the chiefs ordered them to go
+without waiting another hour, and gave them a leaky boat.
+</p>
+<p>
+Tonty had protected the retreat of the Illinois as long as he could.
+With the two Récollets, Boisrondet, young Renault, and L'Esperance, and
+with little else, he set out up the river.
+</p>
+
+<!--[Blank Page]-->
+
+<a name="image-0014"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/p070.jpg"><img src="images/p070s.jpg" width="400" height="250"
+alt="SITE OF FORT ST. LOUIS OF THE ILLINOIS." /></a>
+<br />
+SITE OF FORT ST. LOUIS OF THE ILLINOIS.<br />
+From a Recent Photograph.
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page71" name="page71"></a>[71]</span></p>
+
+<a name="h2H_4_0008" id="h2H_4_0008"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    IV.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    THE UNDESPAIRING NORMAN.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+"The northward current of the eastern shore of Lake Michigan and
+the southward current of the western shore," says a writer exact in
+knowledge, "naturally made the St. Joseph portage a return route to
+Canada, and the Chicago portage an outbound one." But though La Salle
+was a careful observer and must have known that what was then called the
+Chekago River afforded a very short carrying to the Desplaines or upper
+Illinois, he saw fit to use the St. Joseph both coming and going.
+</p>
+<p>
+His march to Fort Frontenac he afterwards described in a letter to one
+of the creditors interested in his discoveries.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Though the thaws of approaching spring greatly increased the difficulty
+of the way, interrupted as it was everywhere by marshes and rivers, to
+say nothing of the length of the journey, which is about five hundred
+leagues in a direct line, and the danger of meeting Indians of four or
+five different nations, through whose
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page72" name="page72"></a>[72]</span>
+
+                                      country we were to pass, as well
+as an Iroquois army which we knew was coming that way; though we must
+suffer all the time from hunger; sleep on the open ground, and often
+without food; watch by night and march by day, loaded with baggage, such
+as blanket, clothing, kettle, hatchet, gun, powder, lead, and skins to
+make moccasins; sometimes pushing through thickets, sometimes climbing
+rocks covered with ice and snow; sometimes wading whole days through
+marshes where the water was waist deep or even more,&mdash;all this did not
+prevent me from going to Fort Frontenac to bring back the things we
+needed and to learn myself what had become of my vessel."
+</p>
+<p>
+Carrying their canoes where the river was frozen, and finally leaving
+them hidden near where the town of Joliet now stands, La Salle and his
+men pushed on until they reached the fort built at the mouth of the St.
+Joseph. Here he found the two voyageurs he had sent to search for the
+Griffin. They said they had been around the lake and could learn nothing
+of her. He then directed them to Tonty, while he marched up the eastern
+shore. This Michigan region was debatable ground among the Indians,
+where they met to fight; and he left
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page73" name="page73"></a>[73]</span>
+
+                                     significant marks on the trees, to
+make prowlers think he had a large war party. A dozen or twenty roving
+savages, ready to pounce like ferocious wildcats on a camp, always
+peeled white places on the trees, and cut pictures there of their totem,
+or tribe mark, and the scalps and prisoners they had taken. They
+respected a company more numerous than themselves, and avoided it.
+</p>
+<p>
+Stopping to nurse the sick when some fell ill of exposure, or to build
+canoes when canoes were needed, La Salle did not reach Fort Niagara
+until Easter, and it was May when Fort Frontenac came into view.
+</p>
+<p>
+No man ever suffered more from treachery. Before he could get
+together the supplies he needed, trouble after trouble fell upon him.
+The men that Tonty had sent to tell him about the destruction of Fort
+Crèvec&oelig;ur were followed by others who brought word that the deserters
+had destroyed his forts at the St. Joseph River and Niagara, and carried
+off all the goods. The Griffin was certainly lost. And before going back
+to the Illinois country he was obliged to chase these fellows and take
+from them what could be recovered. But when everybody else seemed to be
+against him, it was much comfort
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page74" name="page74"></a>[74]</span>
+
+                                  to remember he had a faithful
+lieutenant while the copper-handed Italian lived.
+</p>
+<p>
+La Salle gathered twenty-five men of trades useful to him, and another
+outfit with all that he needed for a ship, having made new arrangements
+with his creditors; and going by way of Michilimackinac, he reached the
+St. Joseph early in November.
+</p>
+<p>
+Whenever, in our own day, we see the Kankakee still gliding along its
+rocky bed, or the solemn Illinois spreading betwixt wooded banks, it is
+easy to imagine a birch canoe just appearing around a bend, carrying La
+Salle or Tonty, and rowed by buckskin-clad voyageurs. On the Kankakee
+thousands of buffaloes filled the plains, and La Salle's party killed
+many, preparing the flesh in dried flakes by smoking it.
+</p>
+<p>
+The buffaloes were left behind when they approached the great town on
+the Illinois. La Salle glanced up at the rock he wanted fortified, but
+no palisade or Frenchman was to be seen.
+</p>
+<p>
+"It seems very quiet," he said to the men in his canoe, "and we have not
+passed a hunter. There&mdash;there is the meadow where the town stood; but
+where is the town?"
+</p>
+<p>
+Heaps of ashes, charred poles, broken scaffolds, wolves prowling where
+papooses had
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page75" name="page75"></a>[75]</span>
+
+             played, crows whirling in black clouds or sitting in rows
+on naked branches, bones,&mdash;a horrible waste plain had taken the place of
+the town.
+</p>
+<p>
+The Frenchmen scattered over it, eagerly seeking some trace of Tonty and
+his companions. They labored all day, until the sun set, among dreadful
+sights which they could never forget, without finding any clue to his
+fate.
+</p>
+<p>
+They piled charred wood together and made a fire and camped among ruins.
+But La Salle lay awake all night, watching the sharp-pointed autumn
+stars march overhead, and suffering what must have seemed the most
+unendurable of all his losses.
+</p>
+<p>
+Determined not to give up his friend, he rose next morning and helped
+the men hide their heavy freight in the rocks, leaving two of them to
+hide with and guard it, and went on down the Illinois River. On one bank
+the retreat of the invaded tribe could be traced, and on the other the
+dead camp-fires of the Iroquois who had followed them. But of Tonty and
+his Frenchmen there was still no sign.
+</p>
+<p>
+La Salle saw the ruins of Fort Crèvec&oelig;ur and his deserted vessel. And
+so searching he came to the mouth of the Illinois and saw for the first
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page76" name="page76"></a>[76]</span>
+
+ time that river of his ambitions, the Mississippi. There he turned back,
+leaving a letter tied to a tree, on the chance of its sometime falling
+into the hands of Tonty. There was nothing to do but to take his men and
+goods from among the rocks near the destroyed town and return to Fort
+Miamis, on the St. Joseph, which some of his followers had rebuilt. The
+winter was upon them.
+</p>
+<p>
+La Salle never sat and brooded over trouble. He was a man of action.
+Shut in with his men and goods, and obliged to wait until spring
+permitted him to take the next step, he began at once to work on Indian
+hunters, and to draw their tribes towards forming a settlement around
+the rock he meant to fortify on the Illinois. Had he been able to attach
+turbulent voyageurs to him as he attached native tribes, his heroic life
+would have ended in success even beyond his dreams. Tonty could better
+deal with ignorant men, his military training standing him in good
+stead; yet Tonty dared scarcely trust a voyageur out of his sight.
+</p>
+<p>
+While Tonty and La Salle were passing through these adventures, the
+Récollet father, Louis Hennepin, and his two companions, sent by La
+Salle, explored the upper Mississippi.
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page77" name="page77"></a>[77]</span>
+
+                                        One of these was named Michael
+Ako; the other, Du Gay, a man from Picardy in France.
+</p>
+<p>
+They left Fort Crèvec&oelig;ur on the last day of February, twenty-four
+hours before La Salle started northward, and entered the Mississippi on
+the 12th of March. The great food-stocked stream afforded them plenty of
+game, wild turkeys, buffaloes, deer, and fish. The adventurers excused
+themselves from observing the Lenten season set apart by the Church for
+fasting; but Father Hennepin said prayers several times a day. He was
+a great robust Fleming, with almost as much endurance as that hardy
+Norman, La Salle.
+</p>
+<p>
+They had paddled about a month up river through the region where
+Marquette and Jolliet had descended, when one afternoon they stopped to
+repair their canoe and cook a wild turkey. Hennepin, with his sleeves
+rolled back, was daubing the canoe with pitch, and the others were busy
+at the fire, when a war whoop, followed by continuous yelling, echoed
+from forest to forest, and a hundred and twenty naked Sioux or Dacotah
+Indians sprang out of boats to seize them. It was no use for Father
+Hennepin to show a peace-pipe or offer fine tobacco. The Frenchmen were
+prisoners. And when these
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page78" name="page78"></a>[78]</span>
+
+                          savages learned by questioning with signs, and
+by drawing on the sand with a stick, that the Miamis, whom they were
+pursuing to fight, were far eastward out of their reach, three or four
+old warriors laid their hands on Hennepin's shaven crown and began to
+cry and howl like little boys.
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0015"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure" style="float: left;">
+<a href="images/p078.jpg"><img src="images/p078.png" width="200" height="220"
+alt="Totem of the Sioux." /></a>
+<br />
+Totem of the Sioux.
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The friar in his long gray capote or hooded garment, which fell to his
+feet, girt about the waist by a rope called the cord of St. Francis,
+stood, with bare toes showing on his sandals, inclining his fat head
+with sympathy. He took out his handkerchief and wiped the old men's
+faces. Du Gay and Ako, in spite of the peril, laughed to see him daub
+the war paint.
+</p>
+<p>
+"The good father hath no suspicion that these old wretches are dooming
+him to death," said Ako to Du Gay.
+</p>
+<p>
+It appeared afterwards that this was what the ceremony meant. For
+several days the Frenchmen, carried northward in their captors' boats,
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page79" name="page79"></a>[79]</span>
+
+ expected to die. No calumet was smoked with them; and every night one
+of the old chiefs, named Aquipaguetin, who had lost a son in war and
+formed a particular intention of taking somebody's scalp for solace,
+sat by the prisoners stroking them and howling by the hour. One night
+when the Frenchmen were forced to make their fire at the end of the
+camp, Aquipaguetin sent word that he meant to finish them without more
+delay. But they gave him some goods out of the store La Salle had sent
+with them, and he changed his mind and concluded to wait awhile. He
+carried the bones of one of his dead relations, dried and wrapped in
+skins gaily ornamented with porcupine-quill work; and it was his custom
+to lay these bones before the tribe and request that everybody blow
+smoke on them. Of the Frenchmen, however, he demanded hatchets, beads,
+and cloth. This cunning old Sioux wanted to get all he could before the
+party reached their villages, where the spoil would be divided.
+</p>
+<p>
+Nineteen days after their capture the prisoners were brought to a place
+which is now the site of St. Paul in the state of Minnesota, where the
+Sioux disbanded, scattering to their separate towns. They had finally
+smoked the peace-pipe with the Frenchmen; and now, fortunately
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page80" name="page80"></a>[80]</span>
+
+ without
+disagreement, portioned their white captives and distributed the goods.
+Father Hennepin was given to Aquipaguetin, who promptly adopted him as a
+son. The Flemish friar saw with disgust his gold-embroidered vestments,
+which a missionary always carried with him for the impressive
+celebration of mass, displayed on savage backs and greatly admired.
+</p>
+<p>
+The explorers were really in the way of seeing as much of the
+upper Mississippi as they could desire. They were far north of the
+Wisconsin's mouth, where white men first entered the great river.
+The young Mississippi, clear as a mountain stream, gathered many small
+tributaries. St. Peter's joined it from a blue-earth channel. This
+rugged northern world was wonderfully beautiful, with valleys and
+heights and rocks and waterfalls.
+</p>
+<p>
+The Sioux were tall, well-made Indians, and so active that the smaller
+Frenchmen could hardly keep up with them on the march. They sometimes
+carried Du Gay and Ako over streams, but the robust friar they forced to
+wade or swim; and when he lagged lame-footed with exhaustion across the
+prairies, they set fire to grass behind him, obliging him to take to his
+heels
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page81" name="page81"></a>[81]</span>
+
+      with them or burn. By adoption into the family of Aquipaguetin
+he had a large relationship thrust upon him, for the old weeper had
+many wives and children and other kindred. Hennepin indeed felt that
+he was not needed and might at any time be disposed of. He never had
+that confidence in his father Aquipaguetin which a son should repose
+in a parent.
+</p>
+<p>
+He was separated from Ako and Du Gay, who were taken to other villages.
+By the time he reached father Aquepaguetin's house he was so exhausted,
+and his legs, cut by ice in the streams, were so swollen that he fell
+down on a bear robe. The village was on an island in a sheet of water
+afterwards called Lake Buade. Hennepin was kindly received by his new
+family, who fed him as well as they were able, for the Sioux had little
+food when they were not hunting. Seeing him so feeble, they gave him an
+Indian sweating bath, which he found good for his health. They made a
+lodge of skins so tight that it would hold heat, and put into it stones
+baked to a white heat. On these they poured water and shut Hennepin in
+the steam until he sweated freely.
+</p>
+<p>
+The Sioux had two kinds of lodges&mdash;one somewhat resembling those of the
+Illinois, the
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page82" name="page82"></a>[82]</span>
+
+              other a cone of poles with skins stretched around, called
+a tepee.
+</p>
+<p>
+Father Hennepin did little missionary work among these Indians. He
+suffered much from hunger, being a man who loved good cheer. But the
+tribes went on a buffalo hunt in July and killed plenty of meat. All
+that northern world was then clothed in vivid verdure. Honeysuckles and
+wild grapevines made the woods fragrant. The gentian, which jealously
+closes its blue-fringed cup from the human eye, grew close to the lakes.
+Captive though the Frenchmen were, they could not help enjoying the
+evening camp-fire with its weird flickerings against the dark of savage
+forests, the heat-lightning which heralded or followed storms, the
+waters, clear, as if filtered through icebergs, dashing in foam over
+mossy rocks.
+</p>
+<p>
+They met during the buffalo hunt, and it was about this time that some
+"spirits," or white men, were heard of, coming from Lake Superior. These
+proved to be the great ranger Greysolon du Lhut and four other
+Frenchmen.
+</p>
+<p>
+This man, cousin to Tonty, passed nearly his whole life in the woods,
+going from Indian town to Indian town, or planting outposts of his own
+in the wilderness. Occasionally he went to
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page83" name="page83"></a>[83]</span>
+
+                                           France, and the king's
+magnificence at Versailles was endured by him until he could gain some
+desired point from the colonial minister and hurry back. The government
+relied on him to keep lawless coureurs de bois within bounds, and he
+traded with nearly all the western tribes. When Greysolon du Lhut
+appeared, the Sioux treated their prisoners with deference; and from
+that time Hennepin, Du Gay, and Ako went where they pleased.
+</p>
+<p>
+They seemed to have had no thought of returning to Fort Crèvec&oelig;ur.
+In those days when each man took his individual life in his hands and
+guarded it in ways which seemed best to him, it was often expedient to
+change one's plan of action. About the time that Tonty was obliged to
+abandon Fort Crèvec&oelig;ur, Hennepin and his companions set off eastward
+with Greysolon du Lhut's party. Hennepin sailed for France as soon as he
+could and wrote a book about his adventures. It was one of La Salle's
+misfortunes that this friar should finally even lay claim to discovering
+the mouth of the Mississippi, adding the glory of that to these real
+adventures on its upper waters.
+</p>
+<p>
+The first of March, La Salle, with a number of the men he had gathered,
+started from Fort
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page84" name="page84"></a>[84]</span>
+
+                  Miamis to the Illinois country. The prairies were one
+dazzling expanse of snow, and as the party slid along on the broad,
+flat snowshoes to which their feet were strapped, some of them were
+so blinded that the pain in their eyes became unendurable. These were
+obliged to camp in the edge of some woods, while the rest went on.
+</p>
+<p>
+La Salle himself was sitting in darkness while the spring sun struck a
+million sparkles from a world yet locked in winter. The wind chilled
+his back, and he spread his hands to the camp blaze. In the torment
+of snow-blindness he wondered whether Tonty was treading these white
+wastes, seeking him, or lying dead of Indian wounds under the snow
+crust. The talk of the other snow-blinded men, sitting about or
+stretched with their feet to the fire, was lost on his ear. Yet his one
+faithful servant, who went with him on all his journeys, could not see
+anything but calm fortitude on his face as he lifted it at the approach
+of snowshoes.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I cannot see you, Hunaut," said La Salle. "Did you find some pine
+leaves?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"I found some, monsieur."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Steep them as soon as you can for the men's eyes."
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page85" name="page85"></a>[85]</span></p>
+
+<p>
+"I wish to tell you, monsieur," the man said as he went about his task
+with a snow-filled kettle, "that I found also a party of Fox Indians
+from Green Bay, and they gave me news of Monsieur de Tonty."
+</p>
+<p>
+Hunaut looked at the long, pale face of his master and saw the under lip
+tremble and twitch.
+</p>
+<p>
+"You know I am much bound to Monsieur de Tonty. Is he alive?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"He is alive, monsieur. He has been obliged to pass the winter at Green
+Bay. Father Hennepin has also passed through that country on his way to
+Montreal."
+</p>
+<p>
+La Salle felt his troubles melt with the unlocking of winter. The brief
+but agonizing snow-blindness passed away with a thaw; and, overtaking
+his other men, he soon met the returning Illinois tribe and began the
+Indian settlement around the rock he intended to fortify.
+</p>
+<p>
+Already the Miami tribe was following him, and he drew them into an
+alliance with the Illinois, impressively founding the principality soon
+to grow there. This eloquent Norman Frenchman had gifts in height and
+the large bone and sinew of Normandy, which his Indian allies
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page86" name="page86"></a>[86]</span>
+
+ always
+admired. And he well knew where to impress his talk with coats, shirts,
+guns, and hunting-knives. As his holdings of land in Canada were made
+his stepping-stones toward the west, so the footing he gained at Fort
+Miamis and in the Illinois country was to be used in discovering the
+real course of the Mississippi and taking possession of its vast basin.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was the end of May before he met Tonty at St. Ignace; Italian and
+Frenchman coming together with outstretched arms and embracing. Tonty's
+black eyes were full of tears, but La Salle told his reverses as calmly
+as if they were another man's.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Any one else," said Father Membré, who stood by, "would abandon the
+enterprise, but Monsieur de la Salle has no equal for constancy of
+purpose."
+</p>
+<p>
+"But where is Father Ribourde?" La Salle inquired, missing the other
+Récollet.
+</p>
+<p>
+Tonty told him sorrowfully how Father Ribourde had gone into the woods
+when his party camped, after being driven up river in a leaky boat by
+the Iroquois; how they had waited and searched for him, and were finally
+made aware that a band of prowling Kickapoos had murdered him.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page87" name="page87"></a>[87]</span></p>
+
+<p>
+Tonty had aimed at Green Bay by the Chicago portage, and tramped along
+the west shore of Lake Michigan, having found it impossible to patch the
+boat.
+</p>
+<p>
+"We were nearly starved," he said; "but we found a few ears of corn and
+some frozen squashes in a deserted Indian town. When we reached the bay
+we found an old canoe and mended it; but as soon as we were on the water
+there rose a northwest wind with driving snow, which lasted nearly five
+days. We ate all our food, and, not knowing what to do, turned back to
+the deserted town to die by a warm fire in one of the wigwams. On the
+way the bay froze. We camped to make moccasins out of Father Membré's
+cloak. I was angry at Étienne Renault for not finishing his; but he
+excused himself on account of illness, having a great oppression of the
+stomach, caused by eating a piece of an Indian rawhide shield which he
+could not digest. His delay proved our salvation, for the next day, as I
+was urging him to finish the moccasins, a party of Ottawas saw the smoke
+of our fire and came to us. We gave them such a welcome as never was
+seen before. They took us into their canoes and carried us to an Indian
+village only two leagues off. All
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page88" name="page88"></a>[88]</span>
+
+                                  the Indians took pleasure in sending
+us food; so, after thirty-four days of starvation, we found our famine
+turned to abundance."
+</p>
+<p>
+Tonty and La Salle, with their followers, paddled the thousand miles to
+Fort Frontenac, to make another start into the wilderness.
+</p>
+<p>
+La Salle was now determined to keep his men together. He set down many
+of his experiences and thoughts in letters which have been kept; so we
+know at this day what was in the great explorer's mind, and how dear he
+held "Monsieur de Tonty, who is full of zeal."
+</p>
+<p>
+On his return to the wilderness with another equipment, he went around
+the head of Lake Michigan and made the short Chicago portage to the
+Desplaines River. Entering by this branch the frozen Illinois, they
+dragged their canoes on sledges past the site of the town and reached
+open water below Peoria Lake. La Salle gave up the plan of building a
+ship, and determined to go on in his canoes to the mouth of the
+Mississippi.
+</p>
+<p>
+So, pausing to hunt when game was needed, his company of fifty-four
+persons entered the great river, saw the Missouri rushing into it&mdash;muddy
+current and clear northern stream flowing alongside until the waters
+mingled. They
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page89" name="page89"></a>[89]</span>
+
+               met and overawed the Indians on both shores, building
+several stockades. The broad river seemed to fill a valley, doubling and
+winding upon itself with innumerable curves, in its solemn and lonely
+stretches. Huge pieces of low-lying bank crumbled and fell in with
+splashes, for the Mississippi ceaselessly eats away its own shore.
+</p>
+<p>
+A hundred leagues below the mouth of the Arkansas they came to a swamp
+on the west side. Behind this swamp, they had been told, might be found
+the Arkansas tribe's great town. La Salle sent Tonty and Father Membré,
+with some voyageurs, to make friends with the Indians and bring him word
+about the town.
+</p>
+<p>
+Tonty had seen nothing like it in the New World. The houses were large
+and square, of sun-baked brick, with a dome of canes overhead. The two
+largest were the chief's house and the temple. Doors were the only
+openings. Tonty and the friar were taken in where the chief sat on a
+bedstead with his squaws, and sixty old men, in white mulberry bark
+cloaks, squatted by with the dignity of a council. The wives, in order
+to honor the sovereign, yelled.
+</p>
+<p>
+The temple was a place where dead chiefs' bones were kept. A mud wall
+built around it
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page90" name="page90"></a>[90]</span>
+
+                was ornamented with skulls. The inside was very rough.
+Something like an altar stood in the center of the floor; and a fire of
+logs was kept burning before it, and never allowed to go out, filling
+the place with smoke, and irritating the eyes of two old Indians who
+tended it in half darkness. The Frenchmen were not allowed to look into
+a secret place where the temple treasure was kept. But, hearing it
+consisted of pearls and trinkets, Tonty conjectured the Indians had got
+it from the Spanish. This tribe was not unlike the Aztecs of Mexico.
+The chief came in barbaric grandeur to visit La Salle, dressed in white,
+having fans carried before him, and a plate of burnished copper to
+represent the sun, for these lower Mississippians were sun-worshipers.
+</p>
+<p>
+With gifts and the grave consideration which instantly won Indians, La
+Salle moved from tribe to tribe towards the Gulf. Red River pulsed upon
+the course like a discharging artery. The sluggish alligator woke from
+the ooze and poked up his snout at the canoes. "He is," says a quaint
+old writer who made that journey afterwards, "the most frightful
+master-fish that can be seen. I saw one that was as large as half a
+hogshead. There are some, they say, as large as
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page91" name="page91"></a>[91]</span>
+
+                                                a hogshead and twelve
+to fifteen feet long. I have no doubt they would swallow up a man if
+they caught him."
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0016"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure" style="float:right;">
+<a href="images/p091.jpg"><img src="images/p091.png" width="200" height="315"
+alt="La Salle at the Mouth of the Mississippi." /></a>
+<br />
+La Salle at the Mouth of the Mississippi.
+</div>
+
+<p>
+In April La Salle reached his goal. He found that the Mississippi
+divided its current into three strands and entered the Gulf through
+three mouths. He separated his party; La Salle took the west passage,
+and Tonty and another lieutenant the middle and the east. At the Gulf of
+Mexico they came together again, and with solemn ceremonies claimed for
+France all the country along the great river's entire length, and far
+eastward and westward, calling it Louisiana, in honor of King Louis XIV.
+A metal plate, bearing the arms of France, the king's name, and the date
+of the discovery, was fixed on a pillar in the shifting soil.
+</p>
+<p>
+Hardy as he was, La Salle sometimes fell ill
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page92" name="page92"></a>[92]</span>
+
+                                             from the great exposures
+he endured. And more than once he was poisoned by some revengeful
+voyageur. It was not until the December following his discovery of the
+Mississippi's mouth that he realized his plan of fortifying the rock
+on the Illinois River. He and Tonty delighted in it, calling it Fort
+St. Louis of the Illinois. Storehouses and quarters for a garrison rose
+around its edges, protected by a palisade. A windlass was rigged to draw
+water from the river below. On the northeast corner of the rock a low
+earthwork remains to this day.
+</p>
+<p>
+Around this natural castle the Indian tribes gathered to La Salle, as to
+a sovereign,&mdash;Miamis, Abenakis, and Shawanoes, from countries eastward,
+and the Illinois returned to spread over their beloved meadow. Instead
+of one town, many towns of log, or rush, or bark lodges could be seen
+from the summit of the Rock. Years afterwards the French still spoke of
+this fortress as Le Rocher. A little principality of twenty thousand
+inhabitants, strong enough to repel any attack of the Iroquois, thus
+helped to guard it. La Salle meant to supply his people with goods and
+give them a market for their furs. At this time he could almost see the
+success of his mighty enterprise assured; he could
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page93" name="page93"></a>[93]</span>
+
+                                                    reasonably count on
+strengthening his stockades along the Mississippi, and on building near
+its mouth a city which would protect the entire west and give an outlet
+to the undeveloped wealth of the continent.
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0017"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure" style="float:right;">
+<a href="images/p093.jpg"><img src="images/p093.png" width="250" height="370"
+alt="Louis XIV., King of France." /></a>
+<br />
+Louis XIV., King of France.
+</div>
+
+<p>
+In the flush of his discovery and success La Salle went back to France,
+leaving Tonty in charge of the Rock and the gathering Indian nations,
+and laid his actual achievements before the king, asking for help. This
+was made necessary by the change in the colonial government, which had
+removed his friend Count Frontenac and left him at the mercy of enemies.
+</p>
+<p>
+The king was not slow to see the capacity of
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page94" name="page94"></a>[94]</span>
+
+                                             this wonderful man, so shy
+of civilization that he lodged in a poor street, carrying with him the
+very breath of the wilderness. La Salle asked for two ships; the king
+gave him four; and many people and supplies were gathered to colonize
+and stock the west.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was La Salle's intention to sail by way of the West Indies, cross the
+Gulf of Mexico, and enter the mouth of the Mississippi. But the Gulf of
+Mexico is rimmed with low marshy land, and he had never seen the mouth
+of the Mississippi from seaward. His unfamiliarity with the coast, or
+night, or fog cheated him of his destination, and the colony was landed
+four hundred miles west of it, in a place called Matagorda Bay, in
+Texas, which then belonged to the Spaniards. Although at the time of
+discovery he had taken the latitude of that exact spot where he set the
+post, he had been unable to determine the longitude; any lagoon might be
+an opening of the triple mouth he sought.
+</p>
+<p>
+La Salle's brother, a priest, who sailed with him on this voyage,
+testified afterwards that the explorer died believing he was near the
+mouth of the Mississippi. Whatever may have been his thoughts, the
+undespairing Norman grappled with his troubles in the usual way.
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page95" name="page95"></a>[95]</span>
+
+ One of his vessels had been captured by the Spanish. Another had been
+wrecked in the bay by seamen who were willing to injure him. These
+contained supplies most needed for the colony. The third sailed away and
+left him; and his own little ship, a gift of the king for his use along
+the coast, was sunk by careless men while he was absent searching
+northward for the Mississippi.
+</p>
+<p>
+Many of the colonists fell sick and died. Men turned sullen and tried to
+desert. Some went hunting and were never seen again. Indians, who dare
+not openly attack, skulked near and set the prairie on fire; and that
+was a sight of magnificence, the earth seeming to burn like a furnace,
+or, far as the eye could follow them, billows of flame rushing as across
+a fire sea. But La Salle was wise, and cut the grass close around his
+powder and camp.
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0018"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/p095.jpg"><img src="images/p095s.jpg" width="350" height="400"
+alt="La Salle's Map of Texas." /></a>
+<br />
+La Salle's Map of Texas.
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Water, plains, trees combined endlessly, like the pieces of a
+kaleidoscope, to confuse him in his search. Tonty was not at hand to
+take care of the colony while he groped for the lost river. He moved his
+wretched people from their camp, with all goods saved off the wreck in
+the bay, to a better site for a temporary fort, on rising ground. The
+carpenters proved good for nothing.
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page96" name="page96"></a>[96]</span>
+
+                                    La Salle himself planned buildings
+and marked out mortises on the logs. First a large house roofed with
+hides, and divided into apartments, was finished to shelter all.
+Separate houses were afterwards built for the women and girls, and
+barracks or rougher cells for the men. A little chapel was finally
+added. And when high-pointed palisades surrounded the whole, La Salle,
+perhaps thinking of his invincible rock
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page97" name="page97"></a>[97]</span>
+
+                                        on the Illinois and the
+faithfulness of his copper-handed lieutenant guarding it, called this
+outpost also Fort St. Louis. Cannon were mounted at the four corners of
+the large house. As the balls were lost, they were loaded with bullets
+in bags.
+</p>
+<p>
+Behind, the prairies stretched away to forests. In front rolled the bay,
+with the restless ever-heaving motion of the Mexican Gulf. A delicious
+salty air, like the breath of perpetual spring, blew in, tingling the
+skin of the sulkiest adventurer with delight in this virgin world.
+Fierce northers must beat upon the colonists, and the languors of summer
+must in time follow; and they were homesick, always watching for sails.
+Yet they had no lack of food. Oysters were so plentiful in the bay that
+they could not wade without cutting their feet with the shells. Though
+the alligator pushed his ugly snout and ridgy back out of lagoons, and
+horned frogs frightened the children, and the rattlesnake was to be
+avoided where it lay coiled in the grass, game of all kinds abounded.
+Every man was obliged to hunt, and every woman and child to help smoke
+the meat. Even the priests took guns in their hands. Father Membré had
+brought some buffalo traditions from the Illinois country.
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page98" name="page98"></a>[98]</span>
+
+ He was of
+Father Hennepin's opinion that this wild creature might be trained to
+draw the plow, and he had faith that benevolence was concealed behind
+its wicked eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+As Father Membré stalked along the prairie with the hunters, his capote
+tucked up out of his way on its cord, one of the men shot a buffalo and
+it dropped. The buffaloes rarely fell at once, even when wounded to
+death, unless hit in the spine. Father Membré approached it curiously.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Come back, Father!" shouted the hunters.
+</p>
+<p>
+Father Membré touched it gently with his gun.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Run, Father, run!" cried the hunters.
+</p>
+<p>
+"It is dead," asserted Father Membré. "I will rest my gun across its
+carcass to steady my aim at the other buffaloes."
+</p>
+<p>
+He knelt to rest his gun across its back.
+</p>
+<p>
+The great beast heaved convulsively to its feet and made a dash at the
+Récollet. It sent him revolving heels over head. But Father Membré got
+up, and, spreading his capote in both hands, danced in front of the
+buffalo to head it off from escaping. At that, with a bellow, the shaggy
+creature charged over him across the prairie, dropping to its knees and
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page99" name="page99"></a>[99]</span>
+
+ dying before the frightened hunters could lift the friar from the ground.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Are you hurt, Father?" they all asked, supporting him, and finding it
+impossible to keep from laughing as he sat up, with his reverend face
+skinned and his capote nearly torn off.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Not unto death," responded Father Membré, brushing grass and dirty hoof
+prints from his garment. "But it hath been greatly impressed on my mind
+that this ox-savage is no fit beast for the plow. Nor will I longer
+counsel our women to coax the wild cows to a milking. It is well to
+adapt to our needs the beasts of a country," said Father Membré, wiping
+blood from his face. "But this buffalo creature hath disappointed me!"
+</p>
+<p>
+La Salle was prostrated through the month of November. But by Christmas
+he was able to set out on a final search from which he did not intend
+to return until he found the Mississippi. All hands in the fort were
+busied on the outfit necessary for the party. Clothes were made of sails
+recovered from one of the wrecked vessels. Eighteen men were to follow
+La Salle, among them his elder brother, the Abbé Cavelier. Some had on
+the remains of garments they had worn in France, and others were dressed
+in deer or
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page100" name="page100"></a>[100]</span>
+
+           buffalo skins. He had bought five horses of the Indians to
+carry the baggage.
+</p>
+<p>
+At midnight on Christmas Eve everybody crowded into the small fortress
+chapel. The priests, celebrating mass, moved before the altar in such
+gold-embroidered vestments as they had, and the light of torches
+illuminated the rough log walls. Those who were to stay and keep the
+outpost, literally lost in the wilderness, were on their knees weeping.
+Those who were to go knelt also, with the dread of an awful uncertainty
+in their minds. The faithful ones foresaw worse than peril from forests
+and waters and savages, for La Salle could not leave behind all the
+villains with whom he was obliged to serve himself. He alone showed the
+composure of a man who never despairs. If he had positively known that
+he was setting out upon a fatal journey,&mdash;that he was undertaking his
+last march through the wilderness,&mdash;the mass lights would still have
+shown the firm face of a man who did not turn back from any enterprise.
+The very existence of these people who had come out to the New World
+with him depended on his success. Whatever lay in the road he had to
+encounter it. The most splendid lives may progress and end through what
+we call
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page101" name="page101"></a>[101]</span>
+
+        tragedy; but it is better to die in the very stress of achievement
+than to stretch a poor existence through a century. The contagion of his
+hardihood stole out like the Christmas incense and spread through the
+chapel.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page102" name="page102"></a>[102]</span></p>
+
+<a name="h2H_4_0009" id="h2H_4_0009"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    V.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    FRENCH SETTLEMENTS.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+"It was the establishment of military posts throughout this vast valley
+that eventually brought on a life struggle between the English and the
+French," says a historian.
+</p>
+<p>
+At first the only spot of civilization in boundless wilderness was
+Tonty's little fort on the Illinois. Protected by it, the Indians went
+hunting and brought in buffalo skins and meat; their women planted
+and reaped maize; children were born; days came and went; autumn haze
+made the distances pearly; winter snow lay on the wigwams; men ran on
+snowshoes; and papooses shouted on the frozen river. Still no news came
+from La Salle.
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0019"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/p102.jpg"><img src="images/p102s.jpg" width="350" height="555"
+alt="MAP OF THE FRENCH SETTLEMENTS." /></a>
+<br />
+MAP OF THE FRENCH SETTLEMENTS.
+</div>
+
+<!--[Blank Page]-->
+
+<p>
+Tonty had made a journey to the mouth of the Mississippi to meet him,
+after he landed with his colony, searching thirty leagues in each
+direction along the coast. La Salle was at that time groping through a
+maze of lagoons in Texas. Tonty, with his men, waded swamps to their
+necks, enduring more suffering than
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page103" name="page103"></a>[103]</span>
+
+                                    he had ever endured in his life
+before. This was in February of the year 1686. Finding it impossible to
+reach La Salle, who must be wandering somewhere on the Gulf of Mexico,
+Tonty wrote a letter to him, intrusting it to the hands of an Indian
+chief, with directions that it be delivered when the explorer appeared.
+He also left a couple of men who were willing to wait in the Arkansas
+villages to meet La Salle.
+</p>
+<p>
+Two years passed before those men brought positive proof of the
+undespairing Norman's fate. The remnant of the party that started with
+La Salle from Fort St. Louis of Texas spent one winter at Fort St. Louis
+of the Illinois, bringing word that they had left their leader in good
+health on the coast. The Abbé Cavelier even collected furs in his
+brother's name, and went on to France, carrying his secret with him.
+</p>
+<p>
+La Salle had been assassinated on the Trinity River, soon after setting
+out on his last determined search for the Mississippi. The eighteenth
+day of March, 1687, some of his brutal voyageurs hid themselves in
+bushes and shot him.
+</p>
+<p>
+So slowly did events move then, and so powerless was man, an atom in the
+wilderness,
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page104" name="page104"></a>[104]</span>
+
+            that the great-hearted Italian, weeping aloud in rage and
+grief, realized that La Salle's bones had been bleaching a year and a
+half before the news of his death reached his lieutenant. It was not
+known that La Salle received burial. The wretches who assassinated him
+threw him into some brush. It was a satisfaction to Tonty that they all
+perished miserably afterwards; those who survived quarrels among
+themselves being killed by the Indians.
+</p>
+<p>
+The undespairing Norman died instantly, without feeling or admitting
+defeat. And he was not defeated. Though his colony&mdash;including Father
+Membré, who had been so long with him&mdash;perished by the hands of the
+Indians in Texas, in spite of Tonty's second journey to relieve them,
+his plan of settlements from the great lakes to the mouth of the
+Mississippi became a reality.
+</p>
+<p>
+Down from Canada came two of the eleven Le Moyne brothers, D'Iberville
+and Bienville, fine fighting sons of a powerful colonial family, with
+royal permission to found near the great river's mouth that city which
+had been La Salle's dream. Fourteen years after La Salle's death, while
+D'Iberville was exploring for a site, the old chief, to whom Tonty had
+given a
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page105" name="page105"></a>[105]</span>
+
+        letter for La Salle, brought it carefully wrapped and delivered
+it into the hands of La Salle's more fortunate successor.
+</p>
+<p>
+Tonty was associated with Le Moyne D'Iberville in these labors around
+the Gulf.
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0020"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/p105.png"><img src="images/p105s.png" width="300" height="55"
+alt="Autograph of Le Moyne D'Iberville." /></a>
+<br />
+Autograph of Le Moyne D'Iberville.
+</div>
+
+<p>
+A long peninsula betwixt the Mississippi and Kaskaskia Rivers, known
+since as the American Bottom, lured away Indians from the great town on
+the Illinois. The new settlement founded on this peninsula was called
+Kaskaskia, for one of the tribes. As other posts sprung into existence,
+Fort St. Louis was less needed. "As early as 1712," we are told, "land
+titles were issued for a common field in Kaskaskia. Traders had already
+opened a commerce in skins and furs with the remote post of Isle
+Dauphine in Mobile Bay." Settlements were firmly established. By 1720
+the luxuries of Europe came into the great tract taken by La Salle in
+the name of King Louis and called Louisiana.
+</p>
+<p>
+Twelve years after La Salle's death a missionary named St. Cosme (Sant'
+Come) journeyed
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page106" name="page106"></a>[106]</span>
+
+                from Canada in a party guided by Tonty. St. Cosme has
+left this record of the man with the copper hand:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+"He guided us as far as the Arkansas and gave us much pleasure on the
+way, winning friendship of some savages and intimidating others who from
+jealousy or desire to plunder opposed the voyage; not only doing the
+duty of a brave man but that of a missionary. He quieted the voyageurs,
+by whom he was generally loved, and supported us by his example in
+devotion."
+</p>
+<p>
+On the Chicago portage a little boy, given to the missionary perhaps
+because he was an orphan and the western country offered him the best
+chances in life, started eagerly ahead, though he was told to wait. The
+rest of the party, having goods and canoes to carry from the Chicago
+River to the Desplaines, lost sight of him, and he was never seen again.
+Autumn grass grew tall over the marshy portage, but they dared not set
+it afire, though his fate was doubtless hidden in that grass. The party
+divided and searched for him, calling and firing guns. Three days they
+searched, and daring to wait no longer, for it was November and the
+river ready to glaze with ice, they left him to
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page107" name="page107"></a>[107]</span>
+
+                                                some French people at
+the post of Chicago. But the child was not found. He disappeared and no
+one ever knew what became of him.
+</p>
+<p>
+Like this is Henri de Tonty's disappearance from history. The records
+show him working with Le Moyne D'Iberville and Le Moyne de Bienville to
+found New Orleans and Mobile, pushing the enterprises which La Salle had
+begun. He has been blamed with the misbehavior of a relative of his,
+Alphonse de Tonty, who got into disgrace at the post of Detroit. Little
+justice has been done to the memory of this man, who should not be
+forgotten in the west. So quietly did he slip out of life that his
+burial place is unknown. Some people believe that he came back to the
+Rock long after its buildings were dismantled and it had ceased to be
+Fort St. Louis of the Illinois. Others say he died in Mobile. But it is
+probable that both La Salle and Tonty left their bodies to the
+wilderness which their invincible spirits had conquered.
+</p>
+<p>
+After the settlement of Kaskaskia a strong fortress was built sixteen
+miles above, on the same side of the Mississippi. The king of France
+spent a million crowns strengthening this place, which was called Fort
+Chartres. Its massive
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page108" name="page108"></a>[108]</span>
+
+                      walls, inclosing four acres, and its buildings and
+arched gateway were like some medieval stronghold strangely transplanted
+from the Old World. White uniformed troops paraded. A village sprang up
+around it. Fort Chartres was the center of government until Kaskaskia
+became the first capital of the Illinois territory. Applications for
+land had to be made at this post. Indians on the Mississippi, for it was
+a little distance from the shore, heard drumbeat and sunset gun, and
+were proud of going in and out of its mighty gateway under the white
+flag of France.
+</p>
+<p>
+Other villages began on the eastern bank of the river&mdash;Cahokia, opposite
+the present city of St. Louis, and Prairie du Rocher, nearer Kaskaskia.
+Ste. Genevieve also was built in what is now the state of Missouri, on
+land which then was claimed by the Spaniards. There was a Post of
+Natchitoches on the Red River, as well as a Post of Washita on the
+Washita River. Settlements were also founded upon La Fourche and Fausse
+Rivière above New Orleans.
+</p>
+<p>
+"The finest country we have seen," wrote one of the adventurers in those
+days, "is all from Chicago to the Tamaroas. It is nothing but prairie
+and clumps of wood as far as you
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page109" name="page109"></a>[109]</span>
+
+                                 can see. The Tamaroas are eight leagues
+from the Illinois." Chicago was a landing place and portage from the
+great lakes long before a stockade with a blockhouse was built called
+Fort Dearborn.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Monjolly," wrote the same adventurer, "or Mount Jolliet, is a mound of
+earth on the prairie on the right side of the Illinois River as you go
+down, elevated about thirty feet. The Indians say at the time of the
+great deluge one of their ancestors escaped, and this little mountain is
+his canoe which he turned over there."
+</p>
+<p>
+La Salle had learned from the Iroquois about the Ohio River. But the
+region through which it flowed to the Mississippi remained for a long
+while an unbroken wilderness. The English settlements on their strip of
+Atlantic coast, however, and the French settlements in the west, reached
+gradually out over this territory and met and grappled. Whichever power
+got and kept the mastery of the west would get the mastery of the
+continent.
+</p>
+<p>
+The territory of Kentucky, like that of Michigan, was owned by no tribe
+of Indians. "It was the common hunting and fighting ground of Ohio
+tribes on the north and Cherokees and Chickasaws on the south."
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page110" name="page110"></a>[110]</span></p>
+
+<p>
+There was indeed one exception to the uninhabited state of all that land
+stretching betwixt the Alleghanies and the Mississippi. Vincennes, now
+a town of Indiana, was, after Kaskaskia, the oldest place in the west.
+This isolated post is said to have been founded by French soldiers and
+emigrants. Five thousand acres were devoted to the common field. De
+Vincennes, for whom it was named, was a nephew of Louis Jolliet. And
+while it is not at all certain that he founded the post, he doubtless
+sojourned there in the Indiana country during his roving life. A small
+stockade on the site of the town of Fort Wayne is said to have been
+built by him.
+</p>
+<p>
+French settlements began to extend southward from Lake Erie to the head
+waters of the Ohio, like a chain to check the English. Presqu' Isle, now
+Erie, Pennsylvania, was founded about the same time as Vincennes.
+</p>
+<p>
+A French settler built his house in an inclosure of two or three acres.
+The unvarying model was one story high, with porches or galleries
+surrounding it. Wooden walls were filled and daubed with a solid mass of
+what was called cat-and-clay, a mixture of mortar and chopped straw or
+Spanish moss. The chimney
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page111" name="page111"></a>[111]</span>
+
+                          was of the same materials, shaped by four long
+corner posts, wide apart below, and nearer together at the top.
+</p>
+<p>
+As fast as children grew up and married they built their cottages
+in their father's yard; and so it went on, until with children and
+grandchildren and great-grandchildren, a small village accumulated
+around one old couple.
+</p>
+<p>
+The French were not anxious to obtain grants of the rich wild land.
+Every settlement had its common field, large or small, as was desired.
+A portion of this field was given to each person in the village for his
+own, and he was obliged to cultivate it and raise food for his family.
+If a man neglected his ground, it was taken from him. A large tract of
+land called the common pasture was also inclosed for everybody's cattle
+to graze in.
+</p>
+<p>
+Sometimes houses were set facing one court, or center, like a camp, for
+defense. But generally the French had little trouble with their savage
+neighbors, who took very kindly to them. The story of western settlement
+is not that dreadful story of continual wars with Indians which reddens
+the pages of eastern colonies. The French were gay people. They loved to
+dance and hunt and spend their time
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page112" name="page112"></a>[112]</span>
+
+                                    in amusements. While the serious,
+stubborn English were grubbing out the foundations of great states on
+the Atlantic coast, it must be confessed these happy folks cared little
+about developing the rich Mississippi valley.
+</p>
+<p>
+During all its early occupation this hospitable land abounded with game.
+Though in November the buffaloes became so lean that only their tongues
+were eaten, swans, geese, and ducks were always plentiful, and the fish
+could not be exhausted.
+</p>
+<p>
+On a day in February, people from Kaskaskia hurried over the road which
+then stretched a league to the Mississippi, for the town was on the
+Kaskaskia River bank. There were settlers in blanket capotes, shaped
+like friars' frocks, with hoods to draw over their heads. If it had
+been June instead of February, a blue or red kerchief would have covered
+the men's heads. The dress of an ordinary frontiersman in those days
+consisted of shirt, breech-cloth, and buckskin leggins, with moccasins,
+and neips, or strips of blanket wrapped around the feet for stockings.
+The voyageur so equipped could undertake any hardship. But in the
+settlements wooden shoes were worn instead of moccasins, and garments of
+texture lighter than buckskin.
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page113" name="page113"></a>[113]</span>
+
+                               The women wore short gowns, or long, full
+jackets, and petticoats; and their moccasins were like those of squaws,
+ornamented with beautiful quill-work. Their outer wraps were not unlike
+the men's; so a multitude of blanket capotes flocked toward the
+Mississippi bank, which at that time had not been washed away, and rose
+steeply above the water. They had all run to see a procession of boats
+pass by from Fort Chartres.
+</p>
+<p>
+A little negro had brought the news that the boats were in sight. Black
+slaves were owned by some of the French; and Indian slaves, sold by
+their captors to the settlers, had long been members of these
+patriarchal households. Many of them had left their work to follow their
+masters to the river; the negroes pointing and shouting, the Indians
+standing motionless and silent.
+</p>
+<p>
+The sun flecked a broad expanse of water, and down this shining track
+rushed a fleet of canoes; white uniforms leading, and brick-colored
+heads above dusky-fringed buckskins following close after. This little
+army waved their hands and fired guns to salute the crowd on shore. The
+crowd all jangled voices in excited talk, no man listening to what
+another said.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page114" name="page114"></a>[114]</span></p>
+
+<p>
+"See you&mdash;there are Monsieur Pierre D'Artaguette and the Chevalier De
+Vincennes and excellent Father Senat in the first boat."
+</p>
+<p>
+"The young St. Ange and Sieur Lalande follow them."
+</p>
+<p>
+"How many of our good Indians have thrown themselves into this
+expedition! The Chickasaw nation may howl when they see this array!
+They will be taught to leave the boats from New Orleans alone!"
+</p>
+<p>
+"But suppose Sieur De Bienville and his army do not meet the Commandant
+D'Artaguette when he reaches the Chickasaw country?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"During his two years at Fort Chartres has Sieur D'Artaguette made
+mistakes? The expedition will succeed."
+</p>
+<p>
+"The saints keep that beautiful boy!&mdash;for to look at him, though he is
+so hardy, Monsieur Pierre D'Artaguette is as handsome as a woman. I have
+heard the southern tribes sacrifice their own children to the sun. This
+is a fair company of Christians to venture against such devils."
+</p>
+<p>
+The Chickasaws, occupying a tract of country now stretching across
+northern Mississippi and western Tennessee, were friendly to the English
+and willing to encroach on the French. They interrupted river traffic
+and practiced
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page115" name="page115"></a>[115]</span>
+
+              every cruelty on their prisoners. D'Artaguette knew
+as well as the early explorers that in dealing with savages it is a
+fatal policy to overlook or excuse their ill-behavior. They themselves
+believed in exact revenge, and despised a foe who did not strike back,
+their insolence becoming boundless if not curbed. So he had planned with
+Le Moyne de Bienville a concerted attack on these allies of the English.
+Bienville, bringing troops up river from New Orleans, was to meet him in
+the Chickasaw country on a day and spot carefully specified.
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0021"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure" style="float:left;">
+<a href="images/p115s.png"><img src="images/p115s.png" width="200" height="80"
+alt="Autograph of Bienville." /></a>
+<br />
+Autograph of Bienville.
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The brilliant pageant of canoes went on down the river, seeming to grow
+smaller, until it dwindled to nothingness in the distance.
+</p>
+<p>
+But in the course of weeks only a few men came back, sent by the
+Chickasaws, to tell about the fate of their leaders. The troops from
+New Orleans did not keep the appointment, arriving too late and then
+retreating. D'Artaguette, urged by his Indians, made the attack with
+such force as he had, and his brave array was destroyed. He and the
+Chevalier
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page116" name="page116"></a>[116]</span>
+
+          Vincennes, with Laland, Father Senat, and many others, a circle
+of noble human torches, perished at the stake. People lamented aloud in
+Kaskaskia and Cahokia streets, and the white flag of France slipped down
+to half-mast on Fort Chartres.
+</p>
+<p>
+This victory made the Chickasaw Indians so bold that scarcely a French
+convoy on the river escaped them. There is a story that a young girl
+reached the gate of Fort Chartres, starving and in rags, from wandering
+through swamps and woods. She was the last of a family arrived from
+France, and sought her sister, an officer's wife, in the fort. The
+Chickasaws had killed every other relative; she, escaping alone, was
+ready to die of exposure when she saw the flag through the trees.
+</p>
+<p>
+But another captain of Fort Chartres, no bolder than young Pierre
+D'Artaguette, but more fortunate, named Neyon de Villiers, twenty years
+afterwards led troops as far east as the present state of Pennsylvania,
+and helped his brother, Coulon de Villiers, continue the struggle
+betwixt French and English by defeating, at Fort Necessity, the English
+commanded by a young Virginia officer named George Washington.
+</p>
+
+<!--[Blank Page]-->
+
+<a name="image-0022"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure">
+<a href="images/p116.jpg"><img src="images/p116s.jpg" width="400" height="260"
+alt="INDIAN GAME OF BALL." /></a>
+<br />
+INDIAN GAME OF BALL.<br />
+After Catlin.
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page117" name="page117"></a>[117]</span></p>
+
+<a name="h2H_4_0010" id="h2H_4_0010"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    VI.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    THE LAST GREAT INDIAN.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+The sound of the Indian drum was heard on Detroit River, and humid May
+night air carried it a league or more to the fort. All the Pottawatomies
+and Wyandots were gathered from their own villages on opposite shores
+to the Ottawas on the south bank, facing Isle Cochon. Their women and
+children squatted about huge fires to see the war dance. The river
+strait, so limpidly and transparently blue in daytime, that dipping a
+pailful of it was like dipping a pailful of the sky, scarcely glinted
+betwixt darkened woods.
+</p>
+<p>
+In the center of an open space, which the camp-fires were built to
+illuminate, a painted post was driven into the ground, and the warriors
+formed a large ring around it. Their moccasined feet kept time to the
+booming of the drums. With a flourish of his hatchet around his head, a
+chief leaped into the ring and began to chase an imaginary foe, chanting
+his own deeds and those of his forefathers. He
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page118" name="page118"></a>[118]</span>
+
+                                               was a muscular rather
+than a tall Indian, with high, striking features. His dark skin was
+colored by war paint, and he had stripped himself of everything but
+ornaments. Ottawa Indians usually wore brilliant blankets, while
+Wyandots of Sandusky and Detroit paraded in painted shirts, their heads
+crowned with feathers, and their leggins tinkling with little bells.
+The Ojibwas, or Chippewas, of the north carried quivers slung on their
+backs, holding their arrows.
+</p>
+<p>
+The dancer in the ring was the Ottawa chief, Pontiac, a man at that
+time fifty years old, who had brought eighteen savage nations under his
+dominion, so that they obeyed his slightest word. With majestic sweep of
+the limbs he whirled through the pantomime of capturing and scalping an
+enemy, struck the painted post with his tomahawk, and raised the awful
+war whoop. His young braves stamped and yelled with him. Another leaped
+into the ring, sung his deeds, and struck the painted post, warrior
+after warrior following, until a wild maze of sinewy figures swam and
+shrieked around it. Blazing pine knots stuck in the ground helped to
+show this maddened whirl, the very opposite of the peaceful, floating
+calumet dance. Boy papooses,
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page119" name="page119"></a>[119]</span>
+
+                             watching it, yelled also, their black eyes
+kindling with full desire to shed blood.
+</p>
+<p>
+Perhaps no Indian there, except Pontiac, understood what was beginning
+with the war dance on that May night of the year 1763. He had been
+laying his plans all winter, and sending huge black and purple wampum
+belts of war, and hatchets dipped in red, to rouse every native tribe.
+All the Algonquin stock and the Senecas of the Iroquois were united with
+him. From the small oven-shaped hut on Isle Cochon, where he lived with
+his squaws and children, to Michilimackinac, from Michilimackinac to the
+lower Mississippi, and from the eastern end of Lake Erie down to the
+Ohio, the messengers of this self-made emperor had secretly carried and
+unfolded his plan, which was to rise and attack all the English forts on
+the same day, and then to destroy all the English settlers, sparing no
+white people but the French.
+</p>
+<p>
+Two years before, an English army had come over to Canada and conquered
+it. That was a deathblow to French settlements in the middle west. They
+dared no longer resist English colonists pushing on them from the east.
+All that chain of forts stretching from Lake Erie down to the
+Ohio&mdash;Presqu' Isle, Le B&oelig;uf, Venango,
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page120" name="page120"></a>[120]</span>
+
+                                         Ligonier&mdash;had been given up to
+the English, as well as western posts&mdash;Detroit, Fort Miami, Ouatanon on
+the Wabash, and Michilimackinac. The settlements on the Mississippi,
+however, still displayed the white flag of France. So large was the
+dominion in the New World which England now had the right to claim,
+that she was unable to grasp it all at once.
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0023"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure" style="float: left;">
+<a href="images/p120.jpg"><img src="images/p120.png" width="250" height="195"
+alt="The White Flag of France." /></a>
+<br />
+The White Flag of France.
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The Indians did not like the English, who treated them with contempt,
+would not offer them presents, and put them in danger of starvation
+by holding back the guns and ammunition, on which they had learned to
+depend, instead of their bows and arrows. For two years they had borne
+the rapid spread of English settlements on land which they still
+regarded as their own. These intruders were not like the French, who
+cared nothing about claiming land, and were always ready to hunt or
+dance with their red brethren.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page121" name="page121"></a>[121]</span></p>
+
+<p>
+All the tribes were, therefore, eager to rise against the English, whom
+they wanted to drive back into the sea. Pontiac himself knew this could
+not be done; but he thought it possible, by striking the English forts
+all at once, to restore the French power and so get the French to help
+him in fighting back their common foe from spreading into the west.
+</p>
+<p>
+Pontiac was the only Indian who ever seemed to realize all the dangers
+which threatened his race, or to have military skill for organizing
+against them. His work had been secret, and he had taken pains to appear
+very friendly to the garrison of Detroit, who were used to the noise of
+Indian yelling and dancing. This fort was the central point of his
+operations, and he intended to take it next morning by surprise.
+</p>
+<p>
+Though La Motte Cadillac was the founder of a permanent settlement on
+the west shore of Detroit River, it is said that Greysolon du Lhut set
+up the first palisades there. About a hundred houses stood crowded
+together within the wooden wall of these tall log pickets, which were
+twenty-five feet high. The houses were roofed with bark or thatched with
+straw. The streets were mere paths, but a wide road went all around the
+town next to the palisades.
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page122" name="page122"></a>[122]</span>
+
+                            Detroit was almost square in shape, with
+a bastion, or fortified projection, at each corner, and a blockhouse
+built over each gate. The river almost washed the front palisades, and
+two schooners usually anchored near to protect the fort and give it
+communication with other points. Besides the homes of settlers, it
+contained barracks for soldiers, a council-house, and a little church.
+</p>
+<p>
+About a hundred and twenty English soldiers, besides fur traders and
+Canadian settlers, were in this inclosure, which was called the fort, to
+distinguish it from the village of French houses up and down the shore.
+Dwellers outside had their own gardens and orchards, also surrounded by
+pickets. These French people, who tried to live comfortably among the
+English, whom they liked no better than the Indians did, raised fine
+pears and apples and made wine of the wild grapes.
+</p>
+<p>
+The river, emptying the water of the upper lakes into Lake Erie, was
+about half a mile wide. Sunlight next morning showed this blue strait
+sparkling from the palisades to the other shore, and trees and gardens
+moist with that dewy breath which seems to exhale from fresh-water seas.
+Indians swarmed early around the fort, pretending that the young men
+were
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page123" name="page123"></a>[123]</span>
+
+     that day going to play a game of ball in the fields, while Pontiac
+and sixty old chiefs came to hold a council with the English. More than
+a thousand of them lounged about, ready for action. The braves were
+blanketed, each carrying a gun with its barrel filed off short enough to
+be concealed under his blanket.
+</p>
+<p>
+About ten o'clock Pontiac and his chiefs crossed the river in birch
+canoes and stalked in Indian file, every man stepping in the tracks
+of the man before him, to the fort gates. The gates on the water side
+usually stood open until evening, for the English, contemptuously
+careless of savages, let squaws and warriors come and go at pleasure.
+They did not that morning open until Pontiac entered. He found himself
+and his chiefs walking betwixt files of armed soldiers. The gates were
+shut behind him.
+</p>
+<p>
+Pontiac was startled as if by a sting. He saw that some one had betrayed
+his plan to the officers. Even fur traders were standing under arms.
+To this day it is not known who secretly warned the fort of Pontiac's
+conspiracy; but the most reliable tradition declares it to have been a
+young squaw named Catherine, who could not endure to see friends whom
+she loved put to death.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page124" name="page124"></a>[124]</span></p>
+
+<p>
+It flashed through Pontiac's mind that he and his followers were now
+really prisoners. The captain of Detroit was afterwards blamed for not
+holding the chief when he had him. The tribes could not rush through
+the closed gates at Pontiac's signal, which was to be the lifting of a
+wampum belt upside down, with all its figures reversed. But the cunning
+savage put on a look of innocence and inquired:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+"My father," using the Indian term of respect, "why are so many of your
+young men standing in the street with their guns?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"They have been ordered out for exercise and discipline," answered the
+officer.
+</p>
+<p>
+A slight clash of arms and the rolling of drums were heard by the
+surprised tribes waiting in suspense around the palisades. They did not
+know whether they would ever see their leader appear again. But he came
+out, after going through the form of a council, mortified by his failure
+to seize the fort, and sulkily crossed the river to his lodge. All his
+plans to bring warriors inside the palisades were treated with contempt
+by the captain of Detroit. Pontiac wanted his braves to smoke the
+calumet with his English father.
+</p>
+<p>
+"You may come in yourself," said the officer,
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page125" name="page125"></a>[125]</span>
+
+                                              "but the crowd you have
+with you must remain outside."
+</p>
+<p>
+"I want all my young men," urged Pontiac, "to enjoy the fragrance of the
+friendly calumet."
+</p>
+<p>
+"I will have none of your rabble in the fort," said the officer.
+</p>
+<p>
+Raging like a wild beast, Pontiac then led his people in assault.
+He threw off every pretense of friendliness, and from all directions
+the tribes closed around Detroit in a general attack. Though it had
+wooden walls, it was well defended. The Indians, after their first
+fierce onset, fighting in their own way, behind trees and sheltered by
+buildings outside the fort, were able to besiege the place indefinitely
+with comparatively small loss to themselves; while the garrison, shut
+in almost without warning, looked forward to scarcity of provisions.
+</p>
+<p>
+All English people caught beyond the walls were instantly murdered. But
+the French settlers were allowed to go about their usual affairs unhurt.
+Queer traditions have come down from them of the pious burial they gave
+to English victims of the Indians. One old man stuck his hands out of
+his grave. The French covered them with earth. But next
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page126" name="page126"></a>[126]</span>
+
+                                                        time they passed
+that way they saw the stiff, entreating hands, like pale fungi, again
+thrust into view. At this the horrified French settlers hurried to their
+priest, who said the neglected burial service over the grave, and so put
+the poor Englishman to rest, for his hands protruded no more.
+</p>
+<p>
+One of the absent schooners kept for the use of the fort had gone down
+river with letters and dispatches. Her crew knew nothing of the siege,
+and she narrowly escaped capture. A convoy of boats, bringing the usual
+spring supplies, was taken, leaving Detroit to face famine. Yet it
+refused to surrender, and, in spite of Pontiac's rage and his continual
+investment of the place, the red flag of England floated over that
+fortress all summer.
+</p>
+<p>
+Other posts were not so fortunate in resisting Pontiac's conspiracy.
+Fort Sandusky, at the west end of Lake Erie; Fort Ouatanon, on the
+Wabash, a little south of where Lafayette, in the state of Indiana, now
+stands; Fort Miami, Presqu' Isle, Le B&oelig;uf, Venango, on the eastern
+border, and Michilimackinac, on the straits, were all taken by the
+Indians.
+</p>
+<p>
+At Presqu' Isle the twenty-seven soldiers went into the blockhouse of
+the fort and prepared
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page127" name="page127"></a>[127]</span>
+
+                      to hold it, lining and making it bullet-proof.
+</p>
+<p>
+A blockhouse was built of logs, or very thick timber, and had no
+windows, and but one door in the lower story. The upper story projected
+several feet all around, and had loopholes in the overhanging, floor,
+through which the men could shoot down. Loopholes were also fixed in the
+upper walls, wide within, but closing to narrow slits on the outside.
+A sentry box or lookout was sometimes put at the top of the roof. With
+the door barred by iron or great beams of wood, and food and ammunition
+stored in the lower room, men could ascend a ladder to the second story
+of a blockhouse and hold it against great odds, if the besiegers did not
+succeed in burning them out.
+</p>
+<p>
+Presqu' Isle was at the edge of Lake Erie, and the soldiers brought
+in all the water they could store. But the attacking Indians made
+breastworks of logs, and shot burning arrows on the shingle roof.
+All the water barrels were emptied putting out fires. While some men
+defended the loopholes, others dug under the floor of the blockhouse and
+mined a way below ground to the well in the fort where Indians swarmed.
+Buildings in the inclosure
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page128" name="page128"></a>[128]</span>
+
+                           were set on fire, but the defenders of the
+blockhouse kept it from catching the flames by tearing off shingles
+from the roof when they began to burn. The mining party reached the well,
+and buckets of water were drawn up and passed through the tunnel to the
+blockhouse. Greatly exhausted, the soldiers held out until next day,
+when, having surrendered honorably, they were all taken prisoners as
+they left the scorched and battered log tower. For savages were such
+capricious and cruel victors that they could rarely be depended upon to
+keep faith. Pontiac himself was superior to his people in such matters.
+If he had been at Presqu' Isle, the garrison would not have been seized
+after surrendering on honorable terms. However, these soldiers were not
+instantly massacred, as other prisoners had been in war betwixt French
+and English, when savage allies could not be restrained.
+</p>
+<p>
+Next to Detroit the most important post was Michilimackinac.
+</p>
+<p>
+This was not the island in the straits bearing that name, but a
+stockaded fort on the south shore of Michigan, directly across the
+strait from St. Ignace. To this day, searching along a beach of deep,
+yielding sand, so different from
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page129" name="page129"></a>[129]</span>
+
+                                 the rocky strands of the islands,
+you may find at the forest edge a cellar where the powder house stood,
+and fruit trees and gooseberry bushes from gardens planted there more
+than two hundred years ago.
+</p>
+<p>
+Michilimackinac, succeeding St. Ignace, had grown in importance, and was
+now a stockaded fort, having French houses both within and outside it,
+like Detroit. After Father Marquette's old mission had been abandoned
+and the buildings burned, another small mission was begun at L'Arbre
+Croche, not far west of Fort Michilimackinac, such of his Ottawas as
+were not scattered being gathered here. The region around also was full
+of Chippewas or Ojibwas.
+</p>
+<p>
+All these Indians hated the English. Some came to the fort and said to a
+young English trader named Alexander Henry, who arrived after the white
+flag was hauled down and the red one about to be hoisted:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+"Englishman, although you have conquered the French, you have not
+conquered us. We are not your slaves. These lakes, these woods and
+mountains were left to us by our ancestors. They are our inheritance,
+and we will part with them to none!"
+</p>
+<p>
+Though these Ottawas and Chippewas were
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page130" name="page130"></a>[130]</span>
+
+                                        independent of those about
+Detroit, they had eagerly taken hold of Pontiac's war belt. The
+missionary priest was able for a while to restrain the Ottawas. The
+Chippewas, gathered in from their winter's hunting, determined to strike
+the first blow.
+</p>
+<p>
+On the fourth day of June, which was the English king's birthday, they
+came and invited the garrison to look at a game of ball, or baggattaway,
+which they were going to play on the long sandy beach, against some
+Sac Indians. The fortress gates stood open. The day was very warm and
+discipline was relaxed. Nobody noticed that squaws, flocking inside the
+fort, had tomahawks and scalping knives hidden under their blankets,
+though a few Englishmen afterward remembered that the squaws were
+strangely huddled in wrappings on a day hot for that climate.
+</p>
+<p>
+The young English trader, Alexander Henry, has left a careful account of
+the massacre at Fort Michilimackinac. He did not go out to see the ball
+game, because he had important letters to write and send by a canoe just
+starting to Canada. Officers and men, believing the red tribes friendly,
+lounged about unarmed. Whitewashed French houses shone in the sun, and
+the surge
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page131" name="page131"></a>[131]</span>
+
+          of the straits sounded peacefully on the beach. Nobody could
+dream that when the shouting Indians drove the ball back from the
+farthest stake, their cries would suddenly change to war whoops.
+</p>
+<p>
+At that horrid yell Henry sprang up and ran to a window of his house.
+He saw Chippewas filling the fort, and with weapons snatched from the
+squaws, cutting down and scalping Englishmen. He caught his own gun from
+its rack, expecting to hear the drum beat to arms. But the surprised
+garrison were unable even to sound an alarm.
+</p>
+<p>
+Seeing that not a Frenchman was touched, Henry slipped into the house of
+his next neighbor, a Canadian named Langlade. The whole family were at
+the front windows, looking at the horrible sights in the fort; but an
+Indian slave, a Pani, or Pawnee woman, beckoned to him and hid him in
+the attic, locking the door and carrying away the key.
+</p>
+<p>
+The attic probably had one or two of those tunnel-like dormer windows
+built in the curving roof of all French houses. Henry found a place
+where he could look out. He saw his countrymen slaughtered without being
+able to help them, and it was like a frightful nightmare
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page132" name="page132"></a>[132]</span>
+
+                                                         from which
+there was to be no awakening. Presently the cry rose:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+"All is finished!"
+</p>
+<p>
+Then the Indians crowded into Langlade's house and inquired whether any
+Englishmen were hid there. So thin was the attic floor of planks laid
+across joists, that Henry could hear every word.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I cannot say," answered the Frenchman. "You may examine for
+yourselves."
+</p>
+<p>
+Henry looked around the attic for some place to hide in. Moccasined feet
+were already coming upstairs. Savage hands shook the attic door, and
+impatient guttural voices demanded the key. While some one went for the
+key, Henry crept into a kind of tunnel made by a heap of birch-bark
+vessels, used in the maple-sugar season. The door was opening before he
+could draw himself quite out of sight, and though the pile was in a dark
+corner, he dreaded displacing some of the birch troughs and making a
+noise.
+</p>
+<p>
+The Indians trod so close to him he thought they must hear him breathe.
+Their bodies were smeared with blood, which could be seen through the
+dusk; and while searching they told Monsieur Langlade how many
+Englishmen they had killed and the number of scalps they had taken.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page133" name="page133"></a>[133]</span></p>
+
+<p>
+Not finding any one, they went away and the door was again locked.
+Henry crept out of hiding. There was a feather bed on the floor and he
+stretched himself on it, so worn out by what he had seen and endured
+that he fell asleep.
+</p>
+<p>
+He was roused by the door opening again. Madame Langlade came in, and
+she was surprised and frightened at finding him. It was nearly night and
+a fierce summer rain beat upon the roof, dripping through cracks of the
+heat-dried bark. Madame Langlade had come to stop a leak. She told Henry
+that all the English except himself were killed, but she hoped he would
+escape. She brought him some water to drink.
+</p>
+<p>
+As darkness came on, he lay thinking of his desperate state. He was four
+hundred miles from Detroit, which he did not then know was besieged,
+and with all his stores captured or destroyed by the Indians, he had no
+provisions. He could not stay where he was, and if he ventured out, the
+first red man who met him would kill him.
+</p>
+<p>
+By morning the Indians came to the house inquiring for Henry, whom they
+had missed. Madame Langlade was in such fear that they might kill her
+children if they found Henry
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page134" name="page134"></a>[134]</span>
+
+                             sheltered in the house, that she told her
+husband where he was and begged to have him given up. This the Frenchman
+at first refused to do; but he finally led the Indians again to the
+attic.
+</p>
+<p>
+Henry stood up, expecting to die.
+</p>
+<p>
+The Indians were all partially drunk and had satisfied themselves with
+slaughter. One of them seized Henry by the collar and lifted a knife to
+plunge into his breast. White man and red man looked intently at each
+other, and the savage, perhaps moved by the fearless despair in the
+young Englishman's eyes, concluded to take him prisoner. Henry began
+to think he could not be killed.
+</p>
+<p>
+He found that the captain and lieutenant of Michilimackinac were also
+alive and prisoners like himself. The missionary priest was doing all
+he could to restrain his maddened flock. At a council held between
+Chippewas and Ottawas, Henry was bought with presents by a Chippewa
+chief named Wawatam, who loved him, and who had been absent the day of
+the attack Wawatam put Henry in his canoe, carried him across the strait
+to Michilimackinac Island, and hid him in a cave, which is now called
+Skull Rock by the islanders, because Henry found
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page135" name="page135"></a>[135]</span>
+
+                                                 ancient skulls and bones
+in the bottom of it. As the island was held sacred by the Indians, this
+was probably one of their old sepulchres. Its dome top is smothered in a
+tangle of evergreens and brush. There is a low, triangular entrance, and
+the hollow inside is shaped like an elbow. More than one island boy has
+since crept back to the dark bend where Henry lay hidden on the skulls,
+but only a drift of damp leaves can be found there now.
+</p>
+<p>
+The whole story of Alexander Henry's adventures, before he escaped and
+returned safely to Canada, is a wonderful chapter in western history.
+</p>
+<p>
+The Indians were not guilty of all the cruelties practiced in this war.
+Bounties were offered for savage scalps. One renegade Englishman, named
+David Owen, came back from adoption and marriage into a tribe, bringing
+the scalps of his squaw wife and her friends.
+</p>
+<p>
+Through the entire summer Pontiac was successful in everything except
+the taking of Detroit. He besieged it from May until October. With
+autumn his hopes began to dwindle. He had asked the French to help him,
+and refused to believe that their king had made a treaty at Paris,
+giving up to the English all
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page136" name="page136"></a>[136]</span>
+
+                             French claims in the New World east of
+the Mississippi. His cause was lost. He could band unstable warriors
+together for a common good, but he could not control politics in Europe,
+nor defend a people given up by their sovereign, against the solidly
+advancing English race.
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0024"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figure" style="float: left;">
+<a href="images/p136.jpg"><img src="images/p136.png" width="250" height="235"
+alt="North America at Close of French Wars, 1763." /></a>
+<br />
+North America at Close of French Wars, 1763.
+</div>
+
+<p>
+But he was unwilling to own himself defeated while the French flag waved
+over a foot of American ground. This clever Indian, needing supplies to
+carry on his war, used civilized methods to get them on credit. He gave
+promissory notes written on birch bark, signed with his own totem, or
+tribe-mark&mdash;a picture of the otter. These notes were faithfully paid.
+</p>
+<p>
+When he saw his struggle becoming hopeless eastward, he drew off to the
+Illinois settlements to fight back the English from taking possession of
+Fort Chartres, the last French post.
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page137" name="page137"></a>[137]</span>
+
+                                     They might come up the Mississippi
+from New Orleans, or they might come down the Ohio. The Iroquois had
+always called the Mississippi the Ohio, considering that river which
+rose near their own country the great river, and the northern branch
+merely a tributary.
+</p>
+<p>
+Pontiac ordered the Illinois Indians to take up arms and stand by him.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Hesitate not," he said, "or I will destroy you as fire does the prairie
+grass! These are the words of Pontiac."
+</p>
+<p>
+They obeyed him. He sent more messengers down as far as New Orleans,
+keeping the tribes stirred against the English. He camped with his
+forces around Fort Chartres, cherishing it and urging the last French
+commandant, St. Ange de Bellerive, to take up arms with him, until that
+poor captain, tormented by the savage mob, and only holding the place
+until its English owners received it, was ready to march out with his
+few soldiers and abandon it.
+</p>
+<p>
+It is told that while Pontiac was leading his forlorn hope, he made his
+conquerors ridiculous. Major Loftus with a detachment of troops came up
+the Mississippi to take possession according to treaty. Pontiac turned
+him back. Captain Pittman came up the river. Pontiac turned him
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page138" name="page138"></a>[138]</span>
+
+ back.
+Captain Morris started from Detroit, and Pontiac squatted defiantly in
+his way. Lieutenant Frazer descended the Ohio. Pontiac caught him and
+shipped him to New Orleans by canoe. Captain Croghan was also stopped
+near Detroit. Both French and Spanish people roared with laughter at
+the many failures of the coming race to seize what had so easily been
+obtained by treaty.
+</p>
+<p>
+Two years and a half passed between Pontiac's attack on Detroit and
+the formal surrender of Fort Chartres. The great war chief's heart, with
+a gradual breaking, finally yielded before the steadily advancing and
+all-conquering people that were to dominate this continent.
+</p>
+<p>
+The second day of winter, late in the afternoon, Pontiac went into the
+fort unattended by any warrior, and without a word sat down near St.
+Ange de Bellerive in the officers' quarters. Both veteran soldier and
+old chief knew that Major Farmar, with a large body of troops, was
+almost in sight of Fort Chartres, coming from New Orleans. Perhaps
+before the low winter sun was out of sight, cannon mounted on one of the
+bastions would have to salute the new commandant. Sentinels on the mound
+of Fort Chartres could see a frosty valley, reaching to
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page139" name="page139"></a>[139]</span>
+
+                                                        the Mississippi,
+glinting in the distance. That alluvial stretch was, in the
+course of years, to be eaten away by the river even to the bastions.
+The fort itself, built at such expense, would soon be abandoned by
+its conquerors, to sink, piecemeal, a noble and massive ruin. The
+dome-shaped powder house and stone quarters would be put to ignoble
+uses, and forest trees, spreading the spice of walnut fragrance, or the
+dense shadow of oaks, would grow through the very room where St. Ange
+and Pontiac sat. Indians, passing by, would camp in the old place,
+forgetting how the last hope of their race had clung to it.
+</p>
+<p>
+The Frenchman partly foresaw these changes, and it was a bitter hour to
+him. He wanted to have it over and to cross the Mississippi, to a town
+recently founded northward on the west shore, where many French settlers
+had collected, called St. Louis. This was then considered Spanish
+ground. But if the French king deserted his American colonies, why
+should not his American colonists desert him?
+</p>
+<p>
+"Father," spoke out Pontiac, with the usual Indian term of respect, "I
+have always loved the French. We have often smoked the calumet together,
+and we have fought battles
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page140" name="page140"></a>[140]</span>
+
+                           together against misguided Indians and the
+English dogs."
+</p>
+<p>
+St. Ange de Bellerive looked at the dejected chief and thought of Le
+Moyne de Bienville, now an old man living in France, who was said to
+have wept and implored King Louis on his knees not to give up to the
+English that rich western domain which Marquette and Jolliet and La
+Salle and Tonty and many another Frenchman had suffered to gain, and
+to secure which he himself had given his best years.
+</p>
+<p>
+"The chief must now bury the hatchet," he answered quietly.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I have buried it," said Pontiac. "I shall lift it no more."
+</p>
+<p>
+"The English are willing to make peace with him, if he recalls all his
+wampum belts of war."
+</p>
+<p>
+Pontiac grinned. "The belts are more than one man can carry."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Where does the chief intend to go when he leaves this post?"
+</p>
+<p>
+Pontiac lifted his hand and pointed east, west, north, south.
+He would have no settled abode. It was a sign that he relinquished the
+inheritance of his fathers to an invader he hated. His race could not
+live under the civilization of the Anglo-Saxon. He would have struck out
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page141" name="page141"></a>[141]</span>
+
+ to the remotest wilderness, had he foreseen to what a burial place
+his continual clinging to the French would bring him. For Pontiac was
+assassinated by an Illinois Indian, whom an English trader had bribed,
+and his body lies somewhere to-day under the pavements of St. Louis,
+English-speaking men treading constantly over him. But if the dead
+chief's ears could hear, he would catch also the sound of the beloved
+French tongue lingering there.
+</p>
+<p>
+A cannon thundered from one of the bastions. St. Ange stood up, and
+Pontiac stood up with him.
+</p>
+<p>
+"The English are in sight," said St. Ange de Bellerive. "That salute is
+the signal for the flag of France to be lowered on Fort Chartres."
+</p>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<!--[Blank Page]-->
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<a name="h2H_4_0011" id="h2H_4_0011"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    ANNOUNCEMENTS
+</h2>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<!--[Blank Page]-->
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN HISTORY
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    EUROPEAN BEGINNINGS
+</h3>
+<h4>
+By <span class="sc">Alice M. Atkinson</span>
+</h4>
+<p class="center">
+12mo, cloth, xvi + 303 Pages, illustrated, 75 cents.
+</p>
+<p>
+This volume has been prepared to meet the need of the sixth grade
+of the grammar school for a short and simple introduction to the
+history of the United States to accord with the recommendations of the
+Committee of Eight of the American Historical Association. In a clear,
+straightforward story full of interest for young readers it tells about
+some of the events that make up the history of Europe from the days of
+Greece and Rome to the colonization of America. The wealth of pertinent
+illustrations adds to the interest and value of the book, and the open,
+attractive type page makes easy reading. Teachers will find the material
+well arranged for class purposes, each section being of suitable length
+for one lesson and fully provided with helps in the way of suggestive
+questions and references for further reading in class.
+</p>
+<p>
+The purpose throughout has been to tell vividly, simply, and fully about
+a few great persons and events; to maintain strict historical accuracy;
+and to bring the past into relation with the present at as many points
+as possible. Primitive man, Rome and Greece, the Northmen, the Church,
+the Crusades, medieval life in town and country, and discoveries and
+inventions are among the subjects treated. The narrative ends with the
+death of Queen Elizabeth and the movement toward the colonization of
+America.
+</p>
+<p>
+English history, wherever possible, forms the basis of the story, giving
+the clearness and simplicity of treatment necessary in a history for the
+grammar grades. Altogether, this book in a new field is admirably
+adapted to successful use in American schools.
+</p>
+<p class="center">
+GINN AND COMPANY <span class="sc">Publishers</span>
+</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    BLAISDELL'S
+<br />
+    BOOKS ON HISTORY
+</h2>
+
+<h4>
+By ALBERT F. BLAISDELL
+</h4>
+
+<h3>
+STORIES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY
+</h3>
+
+<p class="center">
+12mo, cloth, 191 pages, illustrated, 40 cents.
+</p>
+<p>
+Forty of the most interesting events in English history, from the
+earliest times to the present day, form the subjects of these chapters,
+which have been carefully edited and rewritten from standard writers for
+the use of pupils in grades five to eight.
+</p>
+
+<h3>
+THE STORY OF AMERICAN HISTORY
+</h3>
+<p class="center">
+12mo, cloth, 440 pages, illustrated, 60 cents.
+</p>
+<p>
+The story of our country is here told in twenty-six short chapters.
+Each one connects some leading event with an important historical
+character. Picturesque accounts are given of dramatic events, manners
+of olden times, and exceptional deeds of valor. The book provides
+suitable reading for pupils in the middle grades of the grammar school.
+</p>
+<h3>
+HERO STORIES FROM AMERICAN HISTORY
+</h3>
+<p>
+By <span class="sc">Albert F. Blaisdell</span> and <span class="sc">Francis K. Ball</span>, formerly
+Instructor in The Browne, and Nichols School, Cambridge, Mass. 12mo,
+cloth, 259 pages, illustrated, 50 cents.
+</p>
+<p>
+This book may be used either as a supplementary reader in American
+history for the fifth and sixth grades in elementary schools or for
+collateral reading in connection with a formal textbook of a somewhat
+higher grade.
+</p>
+<h3>
+SHORT STORIES FROM AMERICAN HISTORY
+</h3>
+<p>
+By <span class="sc">Albert F. Blaisdell</span> and <span class="sc">Francis K. Ball</span>, formerly
+Instructor in The Browne and Nichols School, Cambridge, Mass. 12mo,
+cloth, 146 pages, illustrated, 40 cents.
+</p>
+<p>
+This collection of interesting stories is designed for supplementary
+reading in the fourth and fifth grades of elementary schools. It
+contains eighteen vivid narratives of dramatic events which took place
+during the first two hundred years in the history of our country. Each
+story will appeal to the young reader because of its human interest and
+because of its presentation of the picturesque life of our forefathers.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+GINN AND COMPANY <span class="sc">Publishers</span>
+</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<a name="h2H_4_0014" id="h2H_4_0014"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY THROUGH THE APPALACHIANS
+</h2>
+<h4>
+    By ALBERT PERRY BRIGHAM
+</h4>
+<p class="center">
+Professor of Geology in Colgate University, Hamilton, N.Y.
+</p>
+<p class="center">
+12mo, cloth, 188 pages, with maps and illustrations, 50 cents.
+</p>
+<p>
+This volume is designed to aid the study of American history and
+geography in the upper grades of grammar and first year of high schools.
+It gives the story of the great roads across the Appalachians, telling
+where they are, why they run as they do, and what their history has
+been. The evolution from Indian trails to modern rapid transit is
+studied in the Berkshires, along the Hudson and Mohawk, across the
+uplands from Philadelphia and Baltimore, and through the Great Valley
+to Tennessee and Kentucky.
+</p>
+<p>
+The book shows how the waves of migration swept through the passes from
+the seaboard to the country west of the mountains, and the essential
+physiographic features of the eastern United States are worked in as
+a part of the narrative.
+</p>
+<p class="quote">
+    <span class="sc">William M. Davis</span>, <i>Professor of Geology</i>, <i>Harvard
+    University, Cambridge, Mass.</i>: Brigham's From Trail to Railway is a
+    serviceable example of a class of books that I hope to see increase in
+    number.
+</p>
+<p class="quote">
+    <span class="sc">Amos W. Farnham</span>, <i>State Normal School</i>, <i>Oswego,
+    N.Y.</i>: From Trail to Railway is written in Professor Brigham's clear
+    and strong way of saying things, and any one who knows the man can feel
+    him as he reads if he cannot see him. The style is well suited to the
+    grades for which the book is written, and the story of pioneer life is
+    one to engage the interest of history and geography pupils alike.
+</p>
+<p class="center">
+GINN AND COMPANY <span class="sc">Publishers</span>
+</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    READING BOOKS ON AMERICAN HISTORY
+</h2>
+
+<table border="0" align="center" summary="Book list with prices">
+<tr><td>  Blaisdell: Story of American History                   </td><td align="right">$0.60 </td></tr>
+<tr><td>  Blaisdell and Ball: Hero Stories from American History </td><td align="right">  .50 </td></tr>
+<tr><td>  Blaisdell and Ball: Short Stories from American History</td><td align="right"> .40</td></tr>
+<tr><td>  Brigham: Geographic Influences in American History     </td><td align="right">1.25 </td></tr>
+<tr><td>  Catherwood: Heroes of the Middle West                  </td><td align="right"> .50 </td></tr>
+<tr><td>  Collins: History of Vermont                            </td><td align="right"> .80 </td></tr>
+<tr><td>  Davis: Under Six Flags. The Story of Texas             </td><td align="right"> .50 </td></tr>
+<tr><td>  Faris: Real Stories from Our History                   </td><td align="right"> .60 </td></tr>
+<tr><td>  Fassett: Colonial Life in New Hampshire                </td><td align="right"> .60 </td></tr>
+<tr><td>  Fiske: How the United States became a Nation           </td><td align="right"> .50 </td></tr>
+<tr><td>  Fiske-Irving: Washington and his Country               </td><td align="right"> .60 </td></tr>
+<tr><td>  Franklin: Autobiography                                </td><td align="right"> .40 </td></tr>
+<tr><td>  Gayley and Flaherty: Poetry of the People              </td><td align="right"> .50 </td></tr>
+<tr><td>  Hitchcock: The Louisiana Purchase                      </td><td align="right"> .60 </td></tr>
+<tr><td>  Lane and Hill: American History in Literature          </td><td align="right"> .50 </td></tr>
+<tr><td>  Lawler: Columbus and Magellan                          </td><td align="right"> .40 </td></tr>
+<tr><td>  Montgomery: Heroic Ballads                             </td><td align="right"> .50 </td></tr>
+<tr><td>  Moore-Tiffany: From Colony to Commonwealth             </td><td align="right"> .60 </td></tr>
+<tr><td>  &nbsp;&nbsp;Pilgrims and Puritans                      </td><td align="right"> .60 </td></tr>
+<tr><td>  Williams: Some Successful Americans                    </td><td align="right"> .50 </td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="center">
+GINN AND COMPANY <span class="sc">Publishers</span>
+</p>
+
+<div style="height: 6em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+
+
+
+
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+
+
+<pre>
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+Project Gutenberg's Heroes of the Middle West, by Mary Hartwell Catherwood
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Heroes of the Middle West
+       The French
+
+Author: Mary Hartwell Catherwood
+
+Release Date: May 22, 2008 [EBook #25556]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEROES OF THE MIDDLE WEST ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, David Garcia and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Front Cover.]
+
+
+[Illustration: COUNT FRONTENAC.
+From a Statue at Quebec.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+HEROES OF THE MIDDLE WEST
+
+The French
+
+BY
+
+MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD
+
+
+  GINN AND COMPANY
+
+  BOSTON . NEW YORK . CHICAGO . LONDON
+  ATLANTA . DALLAS . COLUMBUS . SAN FRANCISCO
+
+
+
+
+  Copyright, 1898
+  By MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD
+
+  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
+  317.8
+
+  The Athenaeum Press
+  GINN AND COMPANY . PROPRIETORS . BOSTON . U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+Let any one who thinks it an easy task attempt to cover the French
+discovery and occupation of the middle west, from Marquette and Jolliet
+to the pulling down of the French flag on Fort Chartres, vivifying men,
+and while condensing events, putting a moving picture before the eye.
+Let him prepare this picture for young minds accustomed only to the
+modern aspect of things and demanding a light, sure touch. Let him
+gather his material--as I have done--from Parkman, Shea, Joutel,
+Hennepin, St. Cosme, Monette, Winsor, Roosevelt--from state records,
+and local traditions richer and oftener more reliable than history;
+and let him hang over his theme with brooding affection, moulding and
+remoulding its forms. He will find the task he so lightly set himself
+a terribly hard and exhausting one, and will appreciate as he never
+before appreciated the labors of those who work in historic fields.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                              PAGE
+
+    I. The Discoverers of the Upper Mississippi                  1
+
+   II. Bearers of the Calumet                                   19
+
+  III. The Man with the Copper Hand                             44
+
+   IV. The Undespairing Norman                                  71
+
+    V. French Settlements                                      102
+
+   VI. The Last Great Indian                                   117
+
+
+
+
+HEROES OF THE MIDDLE WEST.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+THE DISCOVERERS OF THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI.
+
+
+The 17th of May, 1673, Father Jacques Marquette, the missionary priest
+of St. Ignace, on what is now called the north shore of Michigan, and
+Louis Jolliet, a trader from Montreal, set out on a journey together.
+
+Huron and Ottawa Indians, with the priest left in charge of them, stood
+on the beach to see Marquette embark,--the water running up to their
+feet and receding with the everlasting wash of the straits. Behind them
+the shore line of St. Ignace was bent like a long bow. Northward, beyond
+the end of the bow, a rock rose in the air as tall as a castle. But very
+humble was the small mission station which Father Marquette had founded
+when driven with his flock from his post on the Upper Lakes by the
+Iroquois. A chapel of strong cedar posts covered with bark, his own
+hut, and the lodges of his people were all surrounded by pointed
+palisades. Opposite St. Ignace, across a league or so of water, rose
+the turtle-shaped back of Michilimackinac Island, venerated by the
+tribes, in spite of their religious teaching, as a home of mysterious
+giant fairies who made gurgling noises in the rocks along the beach or
+floated vast and cloud-like through high pine forests. The evergreens
+on Michilimackinac showed as if newborn through the haze of undefined
+deciduous trees, for it was May weather, which means that the northern
+world had not yet leaped into sudden and glorious summer. Though the
+straits glittered under a cloudless sky, a chill lingered in the wind,
+and only the basking stone ledges reflected warmth. The clear elastic
+air was such a perfect medium of sight that it allowed the eye to
+distinguish open beach rims from massed forests two or three leagues
+away on the south shore, and seemed to bring within stone's throw those
+nearer islands now called Round and Bois Blanc.
+
+It must have wrung Marquette's heart to leave this region, which has
+an irresistible charm for all who come within its horizon. But he had
+long desired to undertake this journey for a double purpose. He wanted
+to carry his religion as far as possible among strange tribes, and he
+wanted to find and explore that great river of the west, about which
+adventurers in the New World heard so much, but which none had seen.
+
+[Illustration: Totem of the Illinois.]
+
+A century earlier, its channel southward had really been taken
+possession of by the Spaniards, its first discoverers. But they made no
+use of their discovery, and on their maps traced it as an insignificant
+stream. The French did not know whether this river flowed into the Gulf
+of California--which was called the Red Sea--or to the western ocean,
+or through Virginia eastward. Illinois Indians, visiting Marquette's
+mission after the manner of roving tribes, described the father of
+waters and its tributaries. Count Frontenac, the governor of Canada,
+thought the matter of sufficient importance to send Louis Jolliet with
+an outfit to join the missionary in searching for the stream.
+
+The explorers took with them a party of five men. Their canoes, we are
+told, were of birch bark and cedar splints, the ribs being shaped from
+spruce roots. Covered with the pitch of yellow pine, and light enough
+to be carried on the shoulders of four men across portages, these canoes
+yet had toughness equal to any river voyage. They were provisioned with
+smoked meat and Indian corn. Shoved clear of the beach, they shot out
+on the blue water to the dip of paddles. Marquette waved his adieu.
+His Indians, remembering the dangers of that southern country, scarcely
+hoped to see him again. Marquette, though a young man, was of no such
+sturdy build as Jolliet. Among descendants of the Ottawas you may still
+hear the tradition that he had a "white face, and long hair the color
+of the sun" flowing to the shoulders of his black robe.
+
+The watching figures dwindled, as did the palisaded settlement. Hugging
+the shore, the canoes entered Lake Michigan, or, as it was then called,
+the Lake of the Illinois. All the islands behind seemed to meet and
+intermingle and to cover themselves with blue haze as they went down
+on the water. Priest and trader, their skins moist with the breath
+of the lake, each in his own canoe, faced silently the unknown world
+toward which they were venturing. The shaggy coast line bristled with
+evergreens, and though rocky, it was low, unlike the white cliffs of
+Michilimackinac.
+
+Marquette had made a map from the descriptions of the Illinois Indians.
+The canoes were moving westward on the course indicated by his map.
+He was peculiarly gifted as a missionary, for already he spoke six
+Indian languages, and readily adapted himself to any dialect. Marquette,
+the records tell us, came of "an old and honorable family of Laon," in
+northern France. Century after century the Marquettes bore high honors
+in Laon, and their armorial bearings commemorated devotion to the
+king in distress. In our own Revolutionary War it is said that three
+Marquettes fought for us with La Fayette. No young man of his time had
+a pleasanter or easier life offered him at home than Jacques Marquette.
+But he chose to devote himself to missionary labor in the New World,
+and had already helped to found three missions, enduring much hardship.
+Indian half-breeds, at what is now called the "Soo," on St. Mary's
+River, betwixt Lake Huron and Lake Superior, have a tradition that
+Father Marquette and Father Dablon built their missionary station on
+a tiny island of rocks, not more than two canoe lengths from shore, on
+the American side. But men who have written books declare it was on the
+bank below the rapids.
+
+[Illustration: Autograph of Jolliet.]
+
+Jolliet had come of different though not less worthy stock. He was
+Canadian born, the son of a wagon-maker in Quebec; and he had been well
+educated, and possessed an active, adventurous mind. He was dressed for
+this expedition in the tough buckskin hunting suit which frontiersmen
+then wore. But Marquette retained the long black cassock of the priest.
+Their five voyageurs--or trained woodsmen--in more or less stained
+buckskin and caps of fur, sent the canoes shooting over the water with
+scarcely a sound, dipping a paddle now on this side and now on that,
+Indian fashion; Marquette and Jolliet taking turns with them as the
+day progressed. For any man, whether voyageur, priest, or seignior,
+who did not know how to paddle a canoe, if occasion demanded, was at
+sore disadvantage in the New World.
+
+The first day of any journey, before one meets weariness or anxiety and
+disappointment, remains always the freshest in memory. When the sun went
+down, leaving violet shadows on the chill lake, they drew their boats
+on shore; and Pierre Porteret and another Frenchman, named Jacques,
+gathered driftwood to make a fire, while the rest of the crew unpacked
+the cargo. They turned each canoe on its side, propping the ends with
+sticks driven into the ground, thus making canopies like half-roofs to
+shelter them for the night.
+
+"The Sieur Jolliet says it is not always that we may light a camp-fire,"
+said Pierre Porteret to Jacques, as he struck a spark into his tinder
+with the flint and steel which a woodsman carried everywhere.
+
+"He is not likely to have one to-night, even in this safe cove,"
+responded Jacques, kneeling to help, and anxious for supper. "Look now
+at me; I know the Indian way to start a blaze by taking two pieces of
+wood and boring one into the other, rubbing it thus between my palms.
+It is a gift. Not many voyageurs can accomplish that."
+
+"Rub thy two stupid heads together and make a blaze," said another
+hungry man, coming with a kettle of lake water. But the fire soon
+climbed pinkly through surrounding darkness. They drove down two forked
+supports to hold a crosspiece, and hung the kettle to boil their hulled
+corn. Then the fish which had been taken by trolling during the day were
+dressed and broiled on hot coals.
+
+The May starlight was very keen over their heads in a dark blue sky
+which seemed to rise to infinite heights, for the cold northern night
+air swept it of every film. Their first delicious meal was blessed and
+eaten; and stretched in blankets, with their feet to the camp fire, the
+tired explorers rested. They were still on the north shore of what we
+now call the state of Michigan, and their course had been due westward
+by the compass. A cloud of Indian tobacco smoke rose from the lowly roof
+of each canoe, and its odor mingled with the sweet acrid breath of
+burning wood. Jolliet and the voyageurs had learned to use this dried
+brown weed, which all tribes held in great esteem and carried about with
+them in their rovings.
+
+"If true tales be told of the water around the Bay of the Puans," one of
+the voyageurs was heard to say as he stretched himself under the canoe
+allotted to the men, "we may save our salt when we pass that country."
+
+"Have you ever heard, Father," Jolliet inquired of the missionary, "that
+the word Puan meant foul or ill-smelling instead of salty?"
+
+"I know," Marquette answered, "that salt has a vile odor to the Indians.
+They do not use it with their food, preferring to season that instead
+with the sugar they make from the maple tree. Therefore, the bay into
+which we are soon to venture they call the Bay of the Fetid, or
+ill-smelling salty country, on account of saline water thereabout."
+
+"Then why do the Winnebago tribe on this bay allow themselves to be
+called Puans?"
+
+"That has never been explained by the missionaries sent to that post,
+though the name seems to carry no reproach. They are well made and tall
+of stature. I find Wild Oats a stranger name--the Menomonies are Wild
+Oats Indians. Since the gospel has been preached to all these tribes for
+some years past, I trust we may find good Christians among them."
+
+"What else have you learned about the country?"
+
+"Father Dablon told me that the way to the head of that river called
+Fox, up which we must paddle, is as hard as the way to heaven, specially
+the rapids. But when you arrive there it is a natural paradise."
+
+"We have tremendous labor before us," mused Jolliet. "Father, did you
+ever have speech with that Jean Nicollet, who, first of any Frenchman,
+got intimations of the great river?"
+
+"I never saw him."
+
+"There was a man I would have traveled far to see, though he was long a
+renegade among savages, and returned to the settlements only to die."
+
+"Heaven save this expedition from becoming renegade among savages by
+forgetting its highest object!" breathed Marquette.
+
+His companion smiled toward the pleasant fire-light. Jolliet had once
+thought of becoming a priest himself. He venerated this young apostle,
+only half a dozen years his senior. But he was glad to be a free
+adventurer, seeking wealth and honor; not foreseeing that though the
+great island of Anticosti in the Gulf of St. Lawrence would be given
+him for his services, he would die a poor and neglected man.
+
+When, after days of steady progress, the expedition entered the Bay
+of Puans, now called Green Bay, and found the nation of Menomonies or
+Wild Oats Indians, Marquette was as much interested as Jolliet in the
+grain which gave these people their bread. It grew like rice, in marshy
+places, on knotted stalks which appeared above the water in June and
+rose several feet higher. The grain seed was long and slender and
+made plentiful meal. The Indians gathered this volunteer harvest in
+September, when the kernels were so ripe that they dropped readily into
+canoes pushed among the stalks. They were then spread out on lattice
+work and smoked to dry the chaff, which could be trodden loose when the
+whole bulk, tied in a skin bag, was put into a hollow in the ground made
+for that purpose. The Indians pounded their grain to meal and cooked it
+with fat.
+
+The Menomonies tried to prevent Marquette and Jolliet from going
+farther. They said the great river was dangerous, full of frightful
+monsters that swallowed both men and canoes; that there was a roaring
+demon in it who could be heard for leagues; and the heat was so intense
+in those southern countries through which it flowed, that if the
+Frenchmen escaped all other dangers, they must die of that. Marquette
+told them his own life was nothing compared to the good word he wanted
+to carry to those southern tribes, and he laughed at the demon and
+instructed them in his own religion.
+
+The aboriginal tribes, by common instinct, tried from the first to keep
+the white man out of countries which he was determined to overrun and
+possess, regardless of danger.
+
+At the end of a voyage of thirty leagues, or about ninety miles, the
+explorers reached the head of the Bay of Puans, and a region thickly
+settled with Winnebagoes and Pottawotomies between the bay and Winnebago
+Lake, Sacs on Fox River, and Mascoutins, Kickapoos, and Miamis. Fox
+River, which they followed from the head of the bay, and of which the
+lake seemed only an expansion, was a rocky stream. A later traveler has
+told us that Fox River in its further extent is very crooked, and while
+seeming wide, with a boundary of hills on each hand, it affords but a
+slender channel in a marsh full of rushes and wild oats.
+
+The Kickapoos and Mascoutins were rude, coarse-featured Indians. Though
+the missionary exhorted them as seriously as he did their gentler
+neighbors, he could not help remarking to Jolliet that "the Miamis were
+better made, and the two long earlocks which they wore gave them a good
+appearance."
+
+It was the seventh day of June when the explorers arrived in this
+country of cabins woven of rushes; and they did not linger here.
+Frenchmen had never gone farther. They were to enter new lands untrodden
+by the white race. They were in what is now called the state of
+Wisconsin, where "the soil was good," they noted, "producing much corn;
+and the Indians gathered also quantities of plums and grapes." In these
+warmer lands the season progressed rapidly.
+
+Marquette and Jolliet called the chiefs together and told them that
+Jolliet was sent by the governor to find new countries, and Marquette
+had been commissioned of Heaven to preach. Making the chiefs a present,
+without which they would not have received the talk seriously, the
+explorers asked for guides to that tributary which was said to run into
+the great river.
+
+The chiefs responded with the gift of a rush mat for Marquette and
+Jolliet to rest on during their journey, and sent two young Miamis with
+them. If these kindly Indians disliked to set the expedition further on
+its way, they said nothing but very polite things about the hardihood
+of Frenchmen, who could venture with only two canoes, and seven in their
+party, on unknown worlds.
+
+The young Miamis, in a boat of their own, led out the procession the
+tenth morning of June. Taking up paddles, the voyageurs looked back
+at an assembled multitude--perhaps the last kindly natives on their
+perilous way--and at the knoll in the midst of prairies where hospitable
+rush houses stood and would stand until the inmates took them down and
+rolled them up to carry to hunting grounds, and at groves dotting those
+pleasant prairies where guests were abundantly fed.
+
+Three leagues up the marshy and oats-choked Fox River, constantly
+widening to little lakes and receding to a throat of a channel, brought
+the explorers to the portage, or carrying place. The canoes then had
+to be unloaded, and both cargo and boats carried overland to a bend of
+the Miscousing, which was the Indian name for Wisconsin River. "This
+portage," says a traveler who afterwards followed that way, "is half a
+league in length, and half of that is a kind of marsh full of mud." In
+wet seasons the head of Fox River at that time seemed not unlikely to
+find the Wisconsin, for Marquette has set it down in his recital that
+the portage was only twenty-seven hundred paces.
+
+When the two Miamis had helped to carry the goods and had set the French
+on the tributary of the great river, they turned back to their own
+country. Before the men entered the boats Marquette knelt down with
+them on the bank and prayed for the success of the undertaking. It was
+a lovely broad river on which they now embarked, with shining sands
+showing through the clear water, making shallows like tumbling discs
+of brilliant metal,--a river in which the canoes might sometimes run
+aground, but one that deceived the eye pleasantly, with islands all vine
+covered, so when a boat clove a way between two it was a guess how far
+the Wisconsin spread away on each side to shores of a fertile land.
+Oaks, walnuts, whitewood, and thorn trees crowded the banks or fell
+apart, showing prairies rolling to wooded hills. Deer were surprised,
+stretching their delicate necks down to drink at the margin. They looked
+up with shy large eyes at such strange objects moving on their stream,
+and shot off through the brush like red-brown arrows tipped with white.
+The moose planted its forefeet and stared stolidly, its broad horns set
+in defense.
+
+"Sieur Jolliet," said the missionary, once when the canoes drew
+together, "we have now left the waters which flow into the great lakes
+and are discharged through the St. Lawrence past Quebec to the sea.
+We follow those that lead us into strange lands."
+
+"This river Miscousing on which we now are," returned Jolliet, "flows,
+as we see by our compass, to the southwestward. We know it is a branch
+of the great river. I am becoming convinced, Father, that the great
+river cannot discharge itself toward the east, as some have supposed."
+
+The explorers estimated the distance from the country of the Mascoutins
+to the portage to be three leagues, and from the portage to the mouth
+of the Miscousing forty leagues. This distance they covered in a week.
+Drawing their canoes to the shore at night, they pitched camp, varying
+the monotony of their stores with fish and game. Perhaps they had
+learned that wild grapes then budding were not really fit to eat until
+touched by frost. Pierre Porteret said in Marquette's hearing, "the
+Indians could make good wine of grapes and plums if they desired."
+
+The 17th of June, exactly one month from the day on which they had left
+St. Ignace mission, the explorers paddled into a gentle clear river,
+larger than the Miscousing but not yet monstrous in width, which ran
+southward. High hills guarded the right-hand shore, and the left spread
+away in fair meadows. Its current was broken with many little islands,
+like the Miscousing, though on sounding, Jolliet found the water to
+be ten fathoms, or sixty feet, deep. The shores receding, and then
+drawing in, gave unequal and irregular width to the stream. But it was
+unmistakably the great river they had sought, named then as now by the
+Indians, Mississippi, though Marquette at once christened it Conception,
+and another Frenchman who came after him gave it the name of Colbert.
+It was the river of which Nicollet had brought hints from his wanderings
+among northwestern tribes: the great artery of the middle continent, or,
+as that party of explorers believed, of the entire west. Receiving into
+itself tributaries, it rolled, draining a mighty basin, to unknown seas.
+
+The first white men ventured forth upon its upper channel in two birch
+canoes. Five hardy voices raised a shout which was thrown back in an
+echo from the hills; five caps were whirled as high as paddles could
+raise them. But Marquette said, "This is such joy as we cannot express!"
+The men in both canoes silenced themselves while he gave thanks for the
+discovery.
+
+[Illustration: FATHER JACQUES MARQUETTE.
+From a Statue in the Capitol at Washington.]
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+BEARERS OF THE CALUMET.
+
+
+Moving down the Mississippi, league after league, the explorers noted
+first of all its solitude. Wigwam smoke could not be seen on either
+shore. Silence, save the breathing of the river as it rolled on its
+course, seemed to surround and threaten them with ambush. Still, day
+after day, the sweet and awful presence of the wilderness was their only
+company. Once Pierre Porteret dropped his paddle with a yell which was
+tossed about by echoing islands. A thing with a tiger's forehead and a
+wildcat's whiskered snout, holding ears and entire gray and black head
+above the water, swam for the boat. But it dived and disappeared; and
+the other voyageurs felt safe in laughing at him. Not long after,
+Jacques bellowed aloud as he saw a living tree glide under the canoe,
+jarring it from end to end. The voyageurs soon learned to know the huge
+sluggish catfish. They also caught plenty of sturgeon or shovel fish
+when they cast in their nets.
+
+The river descended from its hilly cradle to a country of level
+distances. The explorers, seeing nothing of men, gave more attention to
+birds and animals. Wild turkeys with burnished necks and breasts tempted
+the hunters. The stag uttered far off his whistling call of defiance to
+other stags. And they began to see a shaggy ox, humped, with an enormous
+head and short black horns, and a mane hanging over low-set wicked eyes.
+Its body was covered with curly rough hair. They learned afterwards from
+Indians to call these savage cattle pisikious, or buffaloes. Herds of
+many hundreds grazed together, or, startled, galloped away, like thunder
+rolling along the ground.
+
+The explorers kindled very little fire on shore to cook their meals,
+and they no longer made a camp, but after eating, pushed out and
+anchored, sleeping in their canoes. Every night a sentinel was set to
+guard against surprise. By the 25th of June they had passed through
+sixty leagues of solitude. The whole American continent was thinly
+settled by native tribes, many in name indeed, but of scant numbers.
+The most dreaded savages in the New World were the Iroquois or Five
+Nations, living south of Lake Ontario. Yet they were never able to
+muster more than about twenty-two hundred fighting men.
+
+The canoes were skirting the western bank, driven by the current, when
+one voyageur called to another:
+
+"My scalp for the sight of an Indian!"
+
+"Halt!" the forward paddler answered. "Look to thy scalp, lad, for here
+is the Indian!"
+
+There was no feathered head in ambush, but they saw moccasin prints in
+the low moist margin and a path leading up to the prairie.
+
+Marquette and Jolliet held the boats together while they consulted.
+
+"Do you think it wise to pass by without searching what this may mean,
+Father?"
+
+"No, I do not. We might thus leave enemies behind our backs to cut off
+our return. Some Indian village is near. It would be my counsel to
+approach and offer friendship."
+
+"Shall we take the men?" debated Jolliet. "Two of them at least should
+stay to guard the canoes."
+
+"Let them all stay to guard the canoes. If we go unarmed and unattended,
+we shall not raise suspicion in the savages' minds."
+
+"But we may raise suspicion in our own minds."
+
+Marquette laughed.
+
+"The barbarous people on this unexplored river have us at their mercy,"
+he declared, "We can at best do little to defend ourselves."
+
+"Let us reconnoitre," said Jolliet.
+
+Taking some of the goods which they had brought along for presents,
+Jolliet bade the men wait their return and climbed the bank with the
+missionary. The path led through prairie grass, gay at that season
+with flowers. The delicate buttercup-like sensitive plant shrank from
+their feet in wet places. Neither Frenchman had yet seen the deadly
+rattlesnake of these southern countries, singing as a great fly might
+sing in a web, dart out of its spotted spiral to fasten a death bite
+upon a victim. They walked in silence, dreading only the human beings
+they were going to meet. When they had gone about two leagues, the
+path drew near the wooded bank of a little stream draining into the
+Mississippi which they had scarcely noticed from the canoes. There
+they saw an Indian village, and farther off, up a hill, more groups of
+wigwams. They heard the voices of children, and nobody suspected their
+approach.
+
+Jolliet and Marquette halted. Not knowing how else to announce their
+presence, they shouted together as loud as they could shout. The savages
+ran out of their wigwams and darted about in confusion until they saw
+the two motionless white men. The long black cassock of Marquette had
+instant effect upon them. For their trinkets and a few garments on their
+bodies showed that they had trafficked with Europeans.
+
+Four old Indians, slowly and with ceremony, came out to meet the
+explorers, holding up curious pipes trimmed with many kinds of feathers.
+As soon as they drew near, Marquette called out to them in Algonquin:
+
+"What tribe is this?"
+
+"The Illinois," answered the old man. Being a branch of the great
+Algonquin family, which embraced nearly all northern aboriginal nations,
+with the notable exception of the Iroquois, these people had a dialect
+which the missionary could understand. The name Illinois meant "The
+Men."
+
+Marquette and Jolliet were led to the principal lodge. Outside the door,
+waiting for them, stood another old Indian like a statue of wrinkled
+bronze. For he had stripped himself to do honor to the occasion, and
+held up his hands to screen his face from the sun, making graceful and
+dignified gestures as he greeted the strangers.
+
+"How bright is the sun when you come to see us, O Frenchmen! Our lodges
+are all open to you."
+
+The visitors were then seated in the wigwam, and the pipe, or calumet,
+offered them to smoke, all the Indians crowding around and saying:
+
+[Illustration: Calumet.]
+
+"You do well to visit us, brothers."
+
+Obliged to observe this peace ceremony, Marquette put the pipe to his
+lips, but Jolliet, used to the tobacco weed, puffed with a good will.
+
+The entire village then formed a straggling procession, gazing at the
+Frenchmen, whom they guided farther to the chief's town. He also met
+them standing with a naked retinue at his door, and the calumet was
+again smoked.
+
+The Illinois lodges were shaped like the rounded cover of an emigrant
+wagon, high, and very long, having an opening left along the top for
+the escape of smoke. They were made of rush mats, which the women wove,
+overlapped as shingles on a framework of poles. Rush mats also carpeted
+the ground, except where fires burned in a row along the middle. Each
+fire was used by two families who lived opposite, in stalls made of
+blankets. The ends of the lodge had flaps to shut out the weather, but
+these were left wide open to the summer sun. During visits of ceremony a
+guest stood where he could be seen and heard by all who could crowd into
+the wigwam. But when the Illinois held important councils they made a
+circular inclosure, and built a camp-fire in the center. Many families
+and many fires filled a long wigwam, though Jolliet and Marquette were
+lodged with the chief, who had one for himself and his household.
+
+Whitening embers were sending threads of smoke towards a strip of blue
+sky overhead when the missionary stood up to explain his errand in the
+crowded inclosure, dividing his talk into four parts with presents.
+By the first gift of cloth and beads he told his listeners that the
+Frenchmen were voyaging in peace to visit nations on the river. By the
+second he said:
+
+"I declare to you that God, your Creator, has pity on you, since, when
+you have been so long ignorant of him, he wishes to become known to you.
+I am sent on his behalf with this design. It is for you to acknowledge
+and obey him."
+
+By the third gift they were informed that the chief of the French had
+spread peace and overcome the Iroquois. And the last begged for all the
+information they could give about the sea and intervening nations.
+
+When Marquette sat down, the chief stood up and laid his hand on the
+head of a little slave, prisoner from another tribe.
+
+"I thank you, Blackgown," he said, "and you, Frenchman, for taking so
+much pains to come and visit us. The earth has never been so beautiful,
+nor the sun so bright, as to-day; never has the river been so calm and
+free from rocks, which your canoes removed as they passed! Never has our
+tobacco had so fine a flavor, nor our corn appeared so beautiful as we
+find it to-day. Here is my son. I give him to you that you may know my
+heart. Take pity on us and all our nation. You know the Great Spirit who
+made all: you speak to him and hear him; ask him to give us life and
+health and come and dwell with us."
+
+When the chief had presented his guests with the Indian boy, and again
+offered the calumet, he urged them, with belts and garters of buffalo
+wool, brilliantly dyed, to go no farther down the great river, on
+account of dangers. These compliments being ended, a feast was brought
+in four courses. First came a wooden dish of sagamity or corn-meal
+boiled in water and grease. The chief took a buffalo-horn spoon and fed
+his guests as if they had been little children; three or four spoonfuls
+he put in Marquette's mouth and three or four spoonfuls in Jolliet's.
+Three fish were brought next, and he picked out the bones with his own
+fingers, blew on the food to cool it, and stuffed the explorers with
+all he could make them accept. It was their part to open their mouths
+as young birds do. The third course was that most delicate of Indian
+dishes, a fine dog; but seeing that his guests shrank from this, the
+chief ended the meal with buffalo meat, giving them the fattest parts.
+
+The Illinois were at that time on the west side of the Mississippi,
+because they had been driven from their own country on the Illinois
+River by the Iroquois. The Illinois nation was made up of several united
+tribes: Kaskaskias, Peorias, Kahokias, Tamaroas, and Moingona. Flight
+scattered them, and these were only a few of their villages. They
+afterwards returned to their own land. Their chief wore a scarf or belt
+of fur crossing his left shoulder, encircling his waist and hanging in
+fringe. Arm and leg bands ornamented him, and he also had knee rattles
+of deer hoofs. Paint made of colored clays streaked his face. This
+attractive creature sent the Indian crier around, beating a drum of deer
+hide stretched over a pot, to proclaim the calumet dance in honor of the
+explorers.
+
+Marquette and Jolliet were led out in the prairie to a small grove
+which sheltered the assembly from the afternoon sun. Even the women
+left their maize fields and the beans, melons, and squashes that they
+were cultivating, and old squaws dropped rush braiding, and with
+papooses swarming about their knees, followed. The Illinois were nimble,
+well-formed people, skillful with bow and arrow. They had, moreover,
+some guns among them, obtained from allies who had roved and traded with
+the French. Young braves imitated the gravity of their elders at this
+important ceremony. The Illinois never ate new fruits or bathed at the
+beginning of summer, without first dancing the calumet.
+
+A large gay mat of rushes was spread in the center of the grove, and
+the warrior selected to dance put his god, or manitou--some tiny carven
+image which he carried around his person and to which he prayed--on
+the mat beside a beautiful calumet. Around them he spread his bow and
+arrows, his war club, and stone hatchet. The pipe was made of red rock
+like brilliantly polished marble, hollowed to hold tobacco. A stick
+two feet long, as thick as a cane, formed the stem. For the dance these
+pipes were often decked with gorgeous scarlet, green, and iridescent
+feathers, though white plumes alone made them the symbol of peace, and
+red quills bristled over them for war.
+
+[Illustration: War Club.]
+
+Young squaws and braves who were to sing, sat down on the ground in a
+group near the mat; but the multitude spread in a great circle around
+it. Men of importance before taking their seats on the short grass, each
+in turn lifted the calumet, which was filled, and blew a little smoke
+on the manitou. Then the dancer sprang out, and, with graceful curvings
+in time to the music, seized the pipe and offered it now to the sun and
+now to the earth, made it dance from mouth to mouth along the lines of
+spectators, with all its fluttering plumes spread. The hazy sun shone
+slanting among branches, tracing a network of flickering leaf shadows
+on short grass; and liquid young voices rising and falling chanted,
+
+  "Nanahani, nanahani, nanahani, Naniango!"
+
+
+[Illustration: Stone Hatchet.]
+
+The singers were joined by the Indian drum; and at that another dancer
+sprang into the circle and took the weapons from the mat to fight with
+the principal dancer, who had no defense but the calumet. With measured
+steps and a floating motion of the body the two advanced and attacked,
+parried and retreated, until the man with the pipe drove his enemy from
+the ring. Papooses of a dark brick-red color watched with glistening
+black eyes the last part of the dance, which celebrated victory. The
+names of nations fought, the prisoners taken, and all the trophies
+brought home were paraded by means of the calumet.
+
+The chief presented the dancer with a fine fur robe when he ended; and,
+taking the calumet from his hand, gave it to an old man in the circle.
+This one passed it to the next, and so it went around the huge ring
+until all had held it. Then the chief approached the white men.
+
+"Blackgown," he said, "and you, Frenchman, I give you this peace-pipe
+to be your safeguard wherever you go among the tribes. It shall be
+feathered with white plumes, and displaying it you may march fearlessly
+among enemies. It has power of life and death, and honor is paid to it
+as to a manitou. Blackgown, I give you this calumet in token of peace
+between your governor and the Illinois, and to remind you of your
+promise to come again and instruct us in your religion."
+
+The explorers slept soundly all night in the chief's lodge, feeling as
+safe as among Christian Indians of the north, who stuck thorns in a
+calendar to mark Sundays and holy days. Next morning the chief went with
+several hundred of his people to escort them to their canoes; but it
+was three o'clock in the afternoon before the voyageurs, dropping down
+stream, saw the last of the friendly tribe.
+
+Day after day the boats moved on without meeting other inhabitants.
+Mulberries, persimmons, and hazelnuts were found on the shores. They
+passed the mouth of the Illinois River without knowing its name, or
+that it flowed through lands owned by the tribe that had given them
+the peace-pipe. Farther on, the Mississippi made one of its many bends,
+carrying them awhile directly eastward, and below great rocks like
+castles. As the canoes ran along the foot of this east shore, some of
+the voyageurs cried out. For on the face of the cliff far up were two
+painted monsters in glaring red, green, and black; each as large as a
+calf, with deer horns, blood-colored eyes, tiger beard, a human face,
+and a body covered with scales. Coiled twice around the middle, over the
+head, and passing between the hind legs of each, extended a tail that
+ended like a fish. So startling was this sight, which seemed a banner
+held aloft heralding unseen dangers, that the men felt threatened by a
+demon. But Marquette laughed at them and beckoned for the canoes to be
+brought together.
+
+"What manner of thing is this, Sieur Jolliet?"
+
+"A pair of manitous, evidently. If we had Indians with us, we should see
+them toss a little tobacco out as an offering in passing by."
+
+"I cannot think," said Marquette, "that any Indian has been the
+designer. Good painters in France would find it hard to do as well.
+Besides this, the creatures are so high upon the rock that it was hard
+to get conveniently at them to paint them. And how could such colors be
+mixed in this wilderness?"
+
+"We have seen what pigments and clays the Illinois used in daubing
+themselves. These wild tribes may have among them men with natural skill
+in delineating," said Jolliet.
+
+"I will draw them off," Marquette determined, bringing out the papers on
+which he set down his notes; and while the men stuck their paddles in
+the water to hold the canoes against the current, he made his drawing.
+
+One of the monsters seen by the explorers remained on those rocks until
+the middle of our own century. It was called by the Indians the Piasa.
+More than two centuries of beating winter storms had not effaced the
+brilliant picture when it was quarried away by a stupidly barbarous
+civilization. The town of Alton, in the state of Illinois, is a little
+south of that rock where the Piasa dragons were seen.
+
+As the explorers moved ahead on glassy waters, they looked back, and the
+line of vision changing, they saw that the figures were cut into the
+cliff and painted in hollow relief.
+
+They were still talking about the monsters when they heard the roar of a
+rapid ahead, and the limpid Mississippi turned southward on its course.
+It was as if they had never seen the great river until this instant.
+For a mighty flood, rushing through banks from the west, yellow with
+mud, noisy as a storm, eddying islands of branches, stumps, whole trees,
+took possession of the fair stream they had followed so long. It shot
+across the current of the Mississippi in entering so that the canoes
+danced like eggshells and were dangerously forced to the eastern bank.
+Afterwards they learned that this was the Pekitanoui, or, as we now call
+it, the Missouri River, which flows into the Mississippi not far above
+the present city of St. Louis; and that by following it to its head
+waters and making a short portage across a prairie, a man might in time
+enter the Red or Vermilion Sea of California.
+
+Having slipped out of the Missouri's reach, the explorers were next
+threatened by a whirlpool among rocks before they reached the mouth of
+Ouaboukigou, the Ohio River. They saw purple, red, and violet earths,
+which ran down in streams of color when wet, and a sand which stained
+their paddles like blood. Tall canes began to feather the shore, and
+mosquitoes tormented them as they pressed on through languors of heat.
+Jolliet and Marquette made awnings of sails which they had brought as a
+help to the paddles. They were floating down the current of the muddy,
+swollen river when they saw Indians with guns on the east shore. The
+voyageurs dropped their paddles and seized their own weapons. Marquette
+stood up and spoke to the Indians in Huron. They made no answer. He held
+up the white calumet. Then they began to beckon, and when the party drew
+to land, they made it clear that they had themselves been frightened
+until they saw the Blackrobe holding the calumet. A long-haired tribe,
+somewhat resembling the Iroquois, but calling themselves Tuscaroras;
+they were rovers, and had axes, hoes, knives, beads, and double glass
+bottles holding gunpowder, for which they had traded with white people
+eastward.
+
+They fed the French with buffalo meat and white plums, and declared it
+was but a ten days' journey to the sea. In this they were mistaken, for
+it was more than a thousand miles to the Gulf of Mexico.
+
+[Illustration: Wampum Girdle.]
+
+To each tribe as he passed, Marquette preached his faith by the belt of
+the prayer. For each he had a wampum girdle to hold while he talked, and
+to leave for a remembrance. His words without a witness would be
+forgotten.
+
+Three hundred miles farther the explorers ventured, and had nearly
+reached the mouth of the Arkansas River, floating on a wide expanse of
+water between lofty woods, when they heard wild yelling on the west
+shore, and saw a crowd of savages pushing out huge wooden canoes to
+surround them. Some swam to seize the Frenchmen, and a war club was
+thrown over their heads. Marquette held up the peace-pipe, but the wild
+young braves in the water paid no attention to it. Arrows were ready
+to fly from all sides, and Marquette held the peace-pipe on high and
+continually prayed. At once old Indians restrained the young ones. In
+their turmoil they had not at first seen the calumet; but two chiefs
+came directly out to bring the strangers ashore.
+
+Not one of the missionary's six languages was understood by these
+Indians. He at last found a man who spoke a little Illinois, and Jolliet
+and he were able to explain their errand. He preached by presents, and
+obtained a guide to the next nation.
+
+On that part of the river where the French came to a halt, the Spanish
+explorer De Soto was said to have died two hundred years before. In this
+region the Indians had never seen snow, and their land yielded three
+crops a year. Their pots and plates were of baked earth, and they kept
+corn in huge gourds, or in baskets woven of cane fibers. They knew
+nothing of beaver skins; their furs were the hides of buffaloes.
+Watermelons grew abundantly in their fields. Though they had large
+wigwams of bark, they wore no clothing, and hung beads from their
+pierced noses and ears.
+
+These Akamsea, or Arkansas Indians showed traits of the Aztecs under
+Spanish dominion; for what is now the state of Texas was then claimed
+by Spain. Marquette and Jolliet held a council. They were certain that
+the great river discharged itself into the Gulf of Mexico. If they
+ventured farther, they might fall into the hands of Spaniards, who would
+imprison them; or they might be killed by fiercer tribes than any yet
+encountered, and in either case their discoveries would be lost. So they
+decided to turn back.
+
+All day the Arkansas feasted them with merciless savage hospitality, and
+it was not polite to refuse food or the attention of rocking. Two stout
+Indians would seize a voyageur between them and rock him back and forth
+for hours. If the motion nauseated him, that was his misfortune.
+
+Pierre Porteret crept out behind one of the bark lodges looking very
+miserable in the fog of early morning. His companion on many a long
+journey, never far out of his shadow, sat down to compare experiences.
+
+"Did they rock thee all night, Pierre?"
+
+"They rocked me all night, Jacques. I can well endure what most men can,
+but this is carrying politeness too far."
+
+"I was not so favored. They would have saved you if they had killed the
+rest of us. And they would have saved the good father, no doubt, since
+the chief came and danced the calumet before him."
+
+"Were these red cradle-rockers intending to make an end of us in the
+night?"
+
+"So the chief says; but he broke up the council, and will set us safely
+on our journey up river to-day."
+
+"I am glad of that," said Pierre. "Father Marquette hath not the
+strength of the Sieur Jolliet for such rude wanderings. These southern
+mists, and torturing insects, and clammy heats, and the bad food have
+worked a great change in him."
+
+"We have been gone but two months from the Mission of St. Ignace," said
+Jacques. "They have the bigness of years."
+
+"And many more months that have the bigness of years will pass before we
+see it again."
+
+They grew more certain of this, when, after toiling up the current
+through malarial nights and sweltering days, the explorers left the
+Mississippi and entered the river Illinois. There, above Peoria Lake,
+another Illinois town of seventy-four lodges was found, and these
+Kaskaskias so clung to the Blackrobe that he promised to come back
+and teach them. From the head waters of the Illinois a portage was
+made to Lake Michigan, and the French returned to the Bay of the Puans
+alongshore. They had traveled over twenty-five hundred miles, and
+accomplished the object of their journey.
+
+Jolliet, with his canoe of voyageurs, his maps and papers, and the young
+Indian boy given him by the Illinois chief, went on to Montreal. His
+canoe was upset in the rapids of Lachine just above Montreal, and he
+lost two men, the Indian boy, his papers, and nearly everything except
+his life. But he was able to report to the governor all that he had seen
+and done.
+
+Marquette lay ill, at the Bay of the Puans, of dysentery, brought on by
+hardship; and he was never well again. Being determined, however, to go
+back and preach to the tribe on the Illinois River, he waited all winter
+and all the next summer to regain his strength. He carefully wrote out
+and sent to Canada the story of his discoveries and labors. In autumn,
+with Pierre Porteret and the voyageur Jacques, he ventured again to the
+Illinois. Once he became so ill they were obliged to stop and build him
+a cabin in the wilderness, at the risk of being snowed in all winter.
+It was not until April that he reached what he called his Mission of the
+Immaculate Conception, on the Illinois River, through snow, and water
+and mud, hunger and misery. He preached until after Easter, when, his
+strength being exhausted, Pierre and Jacques undertook to carry him home
+to the Mission of St. Ignace. Marquette had been two years away from his
+palisaded station on the north shore, and nine years in the New World.
+
+It was the 19th of May, and Pierre and Jacques were paddling their canoe
+along the east side of that great lake known now as Michigan. A creek
+parted the rugged coast, and dipping near its shallow mouth they looked
+anxiously at each other.
+
+"What shall we do?" whispered Jacques.
+
+"We must get on as fast as we can," answered Pierre.
+
+They were gaunt and weather-beaten themselves from two years' tramping
+the wilderness. But their eyes dwelt most piteously on the dying man
+stretched in the bottom of the canoe. His thin fingers held a cross.
+His white face and bright hair rested on a pile of blankets. Pierre and
+Jacques felt that no lovelier, kinder being than this scarcely breathing
+missionary would ever float on the blue water under that blue sky.
+
+He opened his eyes and saw the creek they were slipping past, and a
+pleasant knoll beside it, and whispered:--
+
+"There is the place of my burial."
+
+"But, Father," pleaded Pierre, "it is yet early in the day. We can take
+you farther."
+
+"Carry me ashore here," he whispered again.
+
+So they entered the creek and took him ashore, building a fire and
+sheltering him as well as they could. There a few hours afterward he
+died, the weeping men holding up his cross before him, while he thanked
+the Divine Majesty for letting him die a poor missionary. When he could
+no longer speak, they repeated aloud the prayers he had taught them.
+
+They left him buried on that shore with a large cross standing over his
+grave. Later his Indians removed his bones to the Mission of St. Ignace,
+with a procession of canoes and a priest intoning. They were placed
+under the altar of his own chapel. If you go to St. Ignace, you may see
+a monument now on that spot, and people have believed they traced the
+foundation of the old bark chapel. But the spot where he first lay was
+long venerated.
+
+A great fur trader and pioneer named Gurdon Hubbard made this record
+about the place, which he visited in 1818:--
+
+"We reached Marquette River, about where the town of Ludington now
+stands on the Michigan shore. This was where Father Marquette died,
+about one hundred and forty years before, and we saw the remains of a
+red-cedar cross, erected by his men at the time of his death to mark his
+grave; and though his remains had been removed to the Mission, at Point
+St. Ignace, the cross was held sacred by the voyageurs, who, in passing,
+paid reverence to it, by kneeling and making the sign of the cross. It
+was about three feet above the ground, and in a falling condition. We
+reset it, leaving it out of the ground about two feet, and as I never
+saw it after, I doubt not that it was covered by the drifting sands of
+the following winter, and that no white man ever saw it afterwards."
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+THE MAN WITH THE COPPER HAND.
+
+
+One day at the end of August, when Marquette's bones had lain under
+his chapel altar nearly two years and a half, the first ship ever seen
+upon the lakes was sighted off St. Ignace. Hurons and Ottawas, French
+traders, and coureurs de bois, or wood-rangers, ran out to see the
+huge winged creature scudding betwixt Michilimackinac Island and Round
+Island. She was of about forty-five tons' burden. Five cannon showed
+through her port-holes, and as she came nearer, a carved dragon was seen
+to be her figurehead; she displayed the name Griffin and bore the white
+flag of France. The priest himself felt obliged to receive her company,
+for three Recollet friars, in the gray robe of St. Francis, appeared on
+the deck. But two men, one in a mantle of scarlet and gold, and the
+other in white and gold French uniform, were most watched by all eyes.
+
+[Illustration: THE BUILDING OF THE GRIFFIN.
+From the Original Engraving in Father Hennepin's "Nouvelle Decouverte,"
+Amsterdam, 1704.]
+
+The ship fired a salute, and the Indians howled with terror and started
+to run; then turned back to see her drop her sails and her anchor, and
+come up in that deep crescent-shaped bay. She had weathered a hard storm
+in Lake Huron; but the men who handled her ropes were of little interest
+to coureurs de bois on shore, who watched her masters coming to land.
+
+[Illustration: La Salle.]
+
+"It is the Sieur de la Salle in the scarlet mantle," one coureur de bois
+said to another. "And this is the ship he hath been building at Niagara.
+First one hears that creditors have seized his fort of Frontenac, and
+then one beholds him sailing here in state, as though naught on earth
+could daunt him."
+
+"I would like service with him," said the other coureur de bois.
+
+His companion laughed.
+
+"Service with La Salle means the hardest marching and heaviest labor
+a voyageur ever undertook. I have heard he is himself tough as iron. But
+men hereabouts who have been in his service will take to the woods when
+they hear he has arrived; traders that he sent ahead with goods. If he
+gets his hand on them after he finds they have squandered his property,
+it will go hard with them."
+
+"He has a long gray-colored face above his broad shoulders. I have heard
+of this Sieur Robert Cavelier de la Salle ever since he came to the
+province more than ten years ago, but I never saw him before. Is it true
+that Count Frontenac is greatly bound to him?"
+
+"So true that Sieur de la Salle thereby got favor at court. It was at
+court that a prince recommended to him yon swart Italian in white and
+gold that he brought with him on his last voyage from France. Now, there
+is a man known already throughout the colony by reason of his hand."
+
+"Which hand?"
+
+"The right one."
+
+"I see naught ailing that. He wears long gauntlets pulled well over both
+wrists."
+
+"His left hand is on his sword hilt. Doth he not hold the right a little
+stiffly?"
+
+"It is true. The fingers are not bent."
+
+"They never will be bent. It is a hand of copper."
+
+"How can a man with a copper hand be of service in the wilderness?"
+
+The first ranger shrugged. "That I know not. But having been maimed in
+European wars and fitted with a copper hand, he was yet recommended to
+Sieur de la Salle."
+
+"But why hath an Italian the uniform of France?"
+
+"He is a French officer, having been exiled with his father from his own
+country."
+
+The coureur de bois, who had reached the settlement later than his
+companion, grunted.
+
+"One would say thou wert of the Griffin crew thyself, with the latest
+news from Quebec and Montreal."
+
+"Not I," laughed the first one. "I have only been in the woods with
+Greysolon du Lhut, who knows everything."
+
+"Then he told thee the name of this Italian with the copper hand?"
+
+"Assuredly. This Italian with the copper hand is Sieur Greysolon du
+Lhut's cousin, and his name is Henri de Tonty."
+
+"I will say this for Monsieur Henri de Tonty: a better made man never
+stepped on the strand at St. Ignace."
+
+[Illustration: Autograph of Tonty.]
+
+Greysolon du Lhut was the captain of coureurs de bois in the northwest.
+No other leader had such influence with the lawless and daring. When
+these men were gathered in a settlement, spending what they had earned
+in drinking and gaming, it was hard to restrain them within civilized
+bounds. But when they took service to shoulder loads and march into the
+wilderness, the strongest hand could not keep them from open rebellion
+and desertion. There were few devoted and faithful voyageurs, such
+as Pierre Porteret and Jacques had proved themselves in following
+Marquette. The term of service was usually two years; but at the first
+hardship some might slip away in the night, even at the risk of
+perishing before they reached the settlements.
+
+St. Ignace made a procession behind La Salle's party and followed them
+into the chapel to hear mass--French traders, Ottawas, Hurons, coureurs
+de bois, squaws, and children. When the priest turned from the altar, he
+looked down on complexions ranging from the natural pallor of La Salle
+to the black-red of the most weather-beaten native.
+
+[Illustration: Totem of the Hurons.]
+
+The Hurons then living at St. Ignace, whom Father Marquette had led
+there from his earlier mission, afterwards wandered to Detroit and
+Sandusky, the priests having decided to abandon St. Ignace and burn the
+chapel. In our own day we hear of their descendants as settled in the
+Indian Territory, the smallest but wealthiest band of all transplanted
+Indians.
+
+Having entered the lake region with impressive ceremonies, which he
+well knew how to employ before ignorant men and savages, La Salle threw
+aside his splendor, and, with his lieutenant, put on the buckskins for
+marching and canoe journeying into the wilderness. Some of the men he
+had sent up the lakes with goods nearly a year before had collected
+a large store of furs, worth much money; and these he determined to
+send back to Canada on the Griffin, to satisfy his creditors and to give
+him means for carrying on his plans. He had meant, after sending Tonty
+on to the Illinois country, to return to Canada and settle his affairs.
+But it became necessary, as soon as he landed at St. Ignace, to divide
+his party and send Tonty with some of the men to Sault Ste. Marie after
+plunderers who had made off with his goods. The others would doubtless
+desert if left any length of time without a leader. It was a risk also
+to send his ship back to the colony without standing guard over its
+safety himself. But he greatly needed the credit which its load of furs
+would give him. So he determined to send it manned as it was, with
+orders to return to the head of Lake Michigan as soon as the cargo was
+safely landed; while he voyaged down the west side of the lake, and
+Tonty, returning from the Sault, came by the east shore. The reunited
+party would then have the Griffin as a kind of floating fort or refuge,
+and by means of it keep easily in communication with the settlements.
+
+La Salle wanted to build a chain of forts from Niagara to the mouth of
+the Mississippi, when that could be reached. Around each of these, and
+protected by them, he foresaw settlements of French and Indians, and
+a vast trade in furs and the products of the undeveloped west. Thus
+France would acquire a province many times its own size. The undertaking
+was greater than conquering a kingdom. Nobody else divined at that time
+the wonderful promise of the west as La Salle pictured it. Little
+attention had been paid to the discoveries of Marquette and Jolliet.
+France would have got no benefit from them had not La Salle so soon
+followed on the track of missionary and trader, verified what had been
+done, and pushed on.
+
+He had seen Jolliet twice. The first time they met near Niagara, when
+both were exploring; the second time, Jolliet is said to have stopped
+with his maps and papers before they were lost at Fort Frontenac, on
+his return from his Mississippi voyage. La Salle, then master of Fort
+Frontenac, must have examined these charts and journals with interest.
+It does not appear that the two men were ever very friendly. Jolliet
+was too easily satisfied to please La Salle; he had not the ability to
+spread France's dominion over the whole western wilderness, and that was
+what La Salle was planning to do before Marquette and Jolliet set out
+for the Mississippi.
+
+St. Ignace became once more the starting point of an important
+expedition, though La Salle, before sending the Griffin back, sailed in
+her as far as the Bay of Puans, where many of his furs were collected.
+He parted with this good ship in September. She pointed her prow
+eastward, and he turned south with fourteen men in four canoes, carrying
+tools, arms, goods, and even a blacksmith's forge.
+
+Through storm, and famine, and peril with Indians they labored down the
+lake, and did not reach the place where they were to meet Tonty until
+the first of November. La Salle had the three Recollet friars with him.
+Though one was a man sixty-four years old, he bore, with his companions,
+every hardship patiently and cheerfully. The story of priests who helped
+to open the wilderness and who carried religion to savages is a
+beautiful chapter of our national life.
+
+Tonty was not at the place where they were to meet him. This was the
+mouth of the St. Joseph River, which La Salle named the Miamis. The men
+did not want to wait, for they were afraid of starving if they reached
+the Illinois country after the Indians had scattered to winter hunting
+grounds. But La Salle would not go on until Tonty appeared. He put the
+men to work building a timber stockade, which he called Fort Miamis;
+thus beginning in the face of discouragement his plan of creating a line
+of fortifications.
+
+Tonty, delayed by lack of provisions and the need of hunting, reached
+Fort Miamis with his men in twenty days. But the Griffin did not come
+at all. More than time enough had passed for her to reach Fort Niagara,
+unload her cargo, and return. La Salle watched the lake constantly for
+her sails. He began to be heavy-hearted for her, but he dared wait no
+longer; so, sending two men back to meet and guide her to this new post,
+he moved on.
+
+Eight canoes carried his party of thirty-three people. They ascended the
+St. Joseph River to find a portage to the head waters of the Illinois.
+This brought them within the present state of Indiana; and when they had
+reached that curve of the river where South Bend now stands, they left
+St. Joseph to grope for the Theakiki, or Kankakee, a branch called by
+some Indians the Illinois itself.
+
+La Salle became separated from the party on this portage, eagerly and
+fearlessly scouring the woods for the river's beginning. Tonty camped
+and waited for him, fired guns, called, and searched; but he was gone
+all night and until the next afternoon. The stars were blotted overhead,
+for a powder of snow thickened the air, weirdly illuminating naked trees
+in the darkness, but shutting in his vision. It was past midnight when
+he came in this blind circle once more to the banks of the St. Joseph,
+and saw a fire glinting through dense bushes.
+
+"Now I have reached camp," thought La Salle, and he fired his gun to let
+his people know he was approaching. Echoes rolled through the woods.
+Without waiting for a shot in reply he hurried to the fire. No person
+was near it. The descending snow hissed, caught in the flames. Here was
+a home hearth prepared in the wilderness, and no welcome to it but
+silence. La Salle called out in every Indian language he knew. Dead
+branches grated, and the stream rustled betwixt its edges of ice. A heap
+of dry grass was gathered for a bed under a tree by the fire, and its
+elastic top showed the hollow where a man had lain. La Salle put some
+more wood on the fire, piled a barricade of brush around the bed, and
+lay down in a place left warm by some strolling Indian whom his gun had
+frightened away. He slept until morning. In the afternoon he found his
+own camp.
+
+From the first thread of the Kankakee oozing out of swamps to the Indian
+town on the Illinois River where Marquette had done his last missionary
+work, was a long canoe journey. It has been said the rivers of the New
+World made its rapid settlement possible; for they were open highways,
+even in the dead of winter guiding the explorer by their frozen courses.
+
+The Illinois tribe had scattered to their hunting, and the lodges stood
+empty. La Salle's men were famished for supplies, so he ventured to open
+the covered pits in which the Indians stored their corn. Nothing was
+more precious than this hidden grain; but he paid for what he took when
+he reached the Indians. This was not until after New Year's day. He had
+descended the river as far as that expansion now called Peoria Lake.
+
+The Illinois, after their first panic at the appearance of strange white
+men, received La Salle's party kindly, fed all with their own fingers,
+and, as they had done with Jolliet and Marquette when those explorers
+passed them on the Mississippi, tried to coax their guests to go no
+farther. They and other Indians who came to the winter camp told such
+tales of danger on that great river about which the French knew so
+little, that six of La Salle's men deserted in one night.
+
+This caused him to move half a league beyond the Illinois camp,
+where, on the southern bank, he built a palisaded fort and called it
+Crevecoeur. He was by this time convinced that the Griffin was lost.
+Whether she went down in a storm, or was scuttled and sunk by those to
+whom he intrusted her, nothing was ever heard of her again. The furs he
+had sent to pay his creditors never in any way reached port. If they
+escaped shipwreck, they were stolen by the men who escaped with them.
+
+Nothing could bend La Salle's resolution. He meant in some way to
+explore the west through which the southern Mississippi ran. But the
+loss of the Griffin hurt him sorely. He could not go on without more
+supplies; and having no vessel to bring them, the fearful necessity was
+before him of returning on foot and by canoe to Fort Frontenac to bring
+them himself.
+
+He began to build another ship on the Illinois River, and needed cables
+and rigging for her. This vessel being partly finished by the first of
+March, he left her and Fort Crevecoeur in Tonty's charge, and, taking
+four Frenchmen and a Mohegan hunter, set out on the long and terrible
+journey to Fort Frontenac.
+
+The Italian commandant with the copper hand could number on its metal
+fingers the only men to be trusted in his garrison of fifteen. One
+Recollet, Father Louis Hennepin, had been sent with two companions by
+La Salle to explore the upper Mississippi. Father Ribourde and Father
+Membre remained. The young Sieur de Boisrondet might also be relied
+on, as well as a Parisian lad named Etienne Renault, and their servant
+L'Esperance. As for the others, smiths, shipwrights, and soldiers were
+ready to mutiny any moment. They cared nothing about the discovery of
+the west. They were afraid of La Salle when he was with them; and,
+though it is said no man could help loving Tonty, these lawless fellows
+loved their own wills better.
+
+The two men that La Salle had sent to look for the Griffin arrived at
+Fort Crevecoeur, bearing a message from him, having met him on the
+way. They had no news, but he wrote a letter and sent them on to Tonty.
+He urged Tonty to take part of the garrison and go and fortify a great
+rock he had noticed opposite the Illinois town. Whatever La Salle wanted
+done Tonty was anxious to accomplish, though separating himself from
+Crevecoeur, even for a day, was a dangerous experiment. But he took
+some men and ascended the river to the rock. Straight-way smiths,
+shipwrights, and soldiers in Crevecoeur, seizing powder, lead, furs,
+and provisions, deserted and made their way back to Canada. Boisrondet,
+the friars, and L'Esperance hurried to tell Tonty; and thus Fort
+Crevecoeur and the partly finished ship had to be abandoned. Tonty
+dispatched four men to warn La Salle of the disaster. He could neither
+hold this position nor fortify the rock in the midst of jealous savages
+with two friars, one young officer, a lad, and one servant. He took the
+forge, and tools, and all that was left in Crevecoeur into the very
+heart of the Indian village and built a long lodge, shaped like the
+wigwams of the Illinois. This was the only way to put down their
+suspicion. Seeing that the Frenchmen had come to dwell among them, the
+Indians were pleased, and their women helped with poles and mats to
+build the lodge.
+
+For by this time, so long did it take to cover distances in the
+wilderness, spring and summer were past, and the Illinois were dwelling
+in their great town, nearly opposite the rock which La Salle desired to
+have fortified. Tonty often gazed at it across the river, which flows
+southwestward there, with a ripple that does not break into actual
+rapids. The yellow sandstone height, rising like a square mountain out
+of the shore, was tufted with ferns and trees. No man could ascend it
+except at the southeast corner, and at that place a ladder or a rope was
+needed by the unskillful. It had a flat, grassy top shut in by trees,
+through which one could see the surrounding country as from a tower.
+A ravine behind it was banked and floored with dazzling white sand, and
+walled at the farther side by a timbered cliff rising to a prairie.
+With a score of men Tonty could have held this natural fortress against
+any attack. Buckets might be rigged from overhanging trees to draw up
+water from the river. Provisions and ammunition only were needed for a
+garrison. This is now called Starved Rock, and is nearly opposite the
+town of Utica. Some distance up the river is a longer ridge, yet known
+as Buffalo Rock, easy of ascent at one end, up which the savages are
+said to have chased buffaloes; and precipitous at the other, down which
+the frightened beasts plunged to death.
+
+The tenth day of September a mellow autumn sun shone on maize fields
+where squaws labored, on lazy old braves sprawled around buffalo robes,
+gambling with cherry stones, and on peaceful lodges above which the blue
+smoke faintly wavered. It was so warm the fires were nearly out. Young
+warriors of the tribes were away on an expedition; but the populous
+Indian town swarmed with its thousands.
+
+Father Ribourde and Father Membre had that morning withdrawn a league up
+the river to make what they called a retreat for prayer and meditation.
+The other Frenchmen were divided between lodge and garden.
+
+Near this living town was the town of the dead, a hamlet of scaffolds,
+where, wrapped in skins, above the reach of wolves, Illinois Indians of
+a past generation slept their winters and summers away. Crows flapped
+across them and settled on the corn, causing much ado among the papooses
+who were set to shout and rattle sticks for the protection of the crop.
+
+Suddenly a man ran into camp, having just leaped from the canoe which
+brought him across the river. When he had talked an instant old braves
+bounded to their feet with furious cries, the tribes flocked out of
+lodges, and women and children caught the panic and came screeching.
+
+"What is the matter?" exclaimed Tonty, unable to understand their rapid
+jargon. The Frenchmen drew together with the instinct of uniting in
+peril, and, led by old men, the Indian mob turned on them.
+
+"What is it?" cried Tonty.
+
+"The Iroquois are coming! The Iroquois are coming to eat us up! These
+Frenchmen have brought the Iroquois upon us!"
+
+"Will you stand off!" Tonty warned them. And every brave in the town
+knew what they called the medicine hand in his right gauntlet, powerful
+and hard as a war club. They stood in awe of it as something more than
+human. He put his followers behind him. The Frenchmen crowded back to
+back, facing the savage crowd. Hampered by his imperfect knowledge of
+their language, he hearkened intently to the jangle of raging voices,
+his keen dark eyes sweeping from face to face. Tonty was a man of
+impressive presence, who inspired confidence even in Indians. They held
+back from slaying him and his people, but fiercely accused him. Young
+braves dragged from the French lodge the goods and forge saved from Fort
+Crevecoeur, and ran yelling to heave everything into the river.
+
+"The Iroquois are your friends! The Iroquois are at peace with the
+French! But they are marching here to eat us up!"
+
+"We know nothing about the Iroquois!" shouted Tonty. "If they are coming
+we will go out with you to fight them!"
+
+Only half convinced, but panic-stricken from former encounters with a
+foe who always drove them off their land, they turned from threatening
+Tonty and ran to push out their canoes. Into these were put the women
+and children, with supplies, and all were paddled down river to an
+island, where guards could be set. The warriors then came back and
+prepared for fighting. They greased their bodies, painted their faces,
+made ready their weapons, and danced and howled to excite one another
+to courage. All night fires along shore, and leaping figures, were
+reflected in the dark river.
+
+About dawn, scouts who had been sent to watch the Iroquois came running
+with news that the enemy were almost in sight across the prairie on the
+opposite side, slipping under cover of woods along a small branch of the
+Illinois River. They had guns, pistols, and swords, and carried bucklers
+of rawhide. The scouts declared that a Jesuit priest and La Salle
+himself led them.
+
+The Frenchmen's lives seemed hardly a breath long. In the midst of
+maddened, screeching savages Tonty and his men once more stood back to
+back, and he pushed off knives with his copper hand.
+
+"Do you want to kill yourselves?" he shouted. "If you kill us, the
+French governor will not leave a man of you alive! I tell you Monsieur
+de la Salle is not with the Iroquois, nor is any priest leading them!
+Do you not remember the good Father Marquette? Would such men as he
+lead tribes to fight one another? If all the Iroquois had stolen French
+clothes, you would think an army of Jesuits and Messieurs de la Salle
+were coming against you!"
+
+"But some one has brought the Iroquois upon us!"
+
+"I told you before we know nothing about the Iroquois! But we will go
+with you now to fight them!"
+
+At that the Illinois put their knives in their belts and ran shouting to
+throw themselves into the canoes. Warfare with American Indians was
+always the rush of a mob, where every one acted for himself without
+military order.
+
+"It is well the good friars are away making their retreat," said Tonty
+to Boisrondet and Etienne Renault while they paddled as fast as they
+could across the river with the Illinois. "Poor old L'Esperance must be
+making a retreat, too."
+
+"I have not myself seen him since last night," Boisrondet remembered.
+
+"He put out in a canoe when the Indians were embarking their women and
+children," said Etienne Renault. "I saw him go."
+
+And so it proved afterwards. But L'Esperance had slipped away to bring
+back Father Membre and Father Ribourde to tend the wounded and dying.
+
+[Illustration: Long House of the Iroquois.]
+
+Having crossed the river and reached the prairie, Tonty and his allies
+saw the Iroquois. They came prancing and screeching on their savage
+march, and would have been ridiculous if they had not been appalling.
+These Hodenosaunee, or People of the Long House, as they called
+themselves, were the most terrible force in the New World. Tonty saw
+at once it would go hard with the Illinois nation. Never at any time
+as hardy as their invaders, who by frequent attacks had broken their
+courage, and weakened by the absence of their best warriors, they
+wavered in their first charge.
+
+He put down his gun and offered to carry a peace belt to the Iroquois to
+stop the fight. The Illinois gladly gave him a wampum girdle and sent a
+young Indian with him. Boisrondet and Etienne Renault also walked at his
+side into the open space between two barbaric armies. The Iroquois did
+not stop firing when he held up and waved the belt in his left hand.
+Bullets spattered on the hummocky sod of the prairie around him.
+
+"Go back," Tonty said to Boisrondet and Renault and the young Indian.
+"What need is there of so many? Take the lad back, Boisrondet."
+
+They hesitated to leave him.
+
+"Go back!" he repeated sharply, so they turned, and he ran on alone. The
+Iroquois guns seemed to flash in his face. It was like throwing himself
+among furious wolves. Snarling lips and snaky eyes and twisting sinuous
+bodies made nightmares around him. He felt himself seized; a young
+warrior stabbed him in the side. The knife glanced on a rib, but blood
+ran down his buckskins and filled his throat.
+
+"Stop!" shouted an Iroquois chief. "This is a Frenchman; his ears are
+not pierced."
+
+Tonty's swarthy skin was blanching with the anguish of his wound, which
+turned him faint. His black hair clung in rings to a forehead wet with
+cold perspiration. But he held the wampum belt aloft and spat the blood
+out of his mouth.
+
+"Iroquois! The Illinois nation are under the protection of the French
+king and Governor Frontenac! I demand that you leave them in peace!"
+
+A young brave snatched his hat and lifted it on the end of a gun.
+At that the Illinois began a frenzied attack, thinking he was killed.
+Tonty was spun around as in a whirlpool. He felt a hand in his hair and
+a knife at his scalp.
+
+"I never," he thought to himself, "was in such perplexity in my life!"
+
+"Burn him!" shouted some.
+
+"But he is French!" others cried. "Let him go!"
+
+Through all the uproar he urged the peace belt and threatened them with
+France. The wholesome dread which Governor Frontenac had given to that
+name had effect on them. Besides, they had not surprised the Illinois,
+and if they declared a truce, time would be gained to consider their
+future movements.
+
+The younger braves were quieted, and old warriors gave Tonty a belt
+to carry back to the Illinois. He staggered across the prairie. Father
+Ribourde and Father Membre, who had just reached the spot, ran to meet
+him, and supported him as he half fainted from loss of blood.
+
+Tonty and his allies withdrew across the river. But the Iroquois,
+instead of retreating, followed. Seeing what must happen, Tonty thought
+it best for the Illinois to give up their town and go to protect their
+women and children, while he attempted as long as possible to keep the
+invaders at bay. Lodges were set on fire, and the Illinois withdrew
+quietly down river, leaving some of their men in the bluffs less than a
+league from the town, to bring them word of the result. The Frenchmen,
+partially rebuilding their own lodge, which had been wrecked when their
+goods were thrown in the river, stood their ground in the midst of
+insulting savages.
+
+For the Iroquois, still determined on war and despoiling, opened maize
+pits, scattering and burning the grain; trampled corn in the fields; and
+even pulled the dead off their scaffolds. They were angry at the French
+for threatening them with that invisible power of France, and bent on
+chasing the Illinois. Yet Tonty was able to force a kind of treaty
+between them and the retreating nation, through the men left in the
+bluffs. As soon as they had made it, however, they began canoes of elm
+bark, to follow the Illinois down river.
+
+Two or three days passed, while the Frenchmen sat covering the invaded
+tribe's retreat. They scarcely slept at night. Their enemies prowled
+around their lodge or celebrated dances on the ruins of the town.
+The river flowed placidly, and the sun shone on desolation and on
+the unaltered ferny buttresses of the great rock and its castellated
+neighbors. Tonty heard with half delirious ears the little creatures
+which sing in the grass and fly before man, but return to their singing
+as soon as he passes by. The friars dressed and tended his fevered
+wound, and when the Iroquois sent for him to come to a council, Father
+Membre went with him.
+
+Within the rude fort of posts and poles saved from ruined lodges, which
+the Iroquois had built for themselves, adding a ruff of freshly chopped
+trees, the two white men sat down in a ring of glowering savages. Six
+packs of beaver skins were piled ready for the oration; and the orator
+rose and addressed Tonty.
+
+With the first two the Indian spokesman promised that his nation would
+not eat Count Frontenac's children, those cowardly Illinois.
+
+The next was a plaster to heal Tonty's wound.
+
+The next was oil to anoint him and the Recollets, so their joints would
+move easily in traveling.
+
+The next said that the sun was bright.
+
+And the sixth and last pack ordered the French to get up and leave
+the country.
+
+When the speaker sat down, Tonty came to his feet and looked at the
+beaver skins piled before them. Then he looked around the circle of hard
+weather-beaten faces and restless eyes, and thanked the Iroquois for
+their gift.
+
+"But I would know," said Tonty, "how soon you yourselves intend to
+leave the country and let the Illinois be in peace?"
+
+There was a growl, and a number of the braves burst out with the
+declaration that they intended to eat Illinois flesh first.
+
+Tonty raised his foot and kicked the beaver skins from him. In that very
+way they would have rejected a one-sided treaty themselves. Up they
+sprang with drawn knives and drove him and Father Membre from the fort.
+
+All night the French stood guard for fear of being surprised and
+massacred in their lodge. At daybreak the chiefs ordered them to go
+without waiting another hour, and gave them a leaky boat.
+
+Tonty had protected the retreat of the Illinois as long as he could.
+With the two Recollets, Boisrondet, young Renault, and L'Esperance, and
+with little else, he set out up the river.
+
+[Illustration: SITE OF FORT ST. LOUIS OF THE ILLINOIS.
+From a Recent Photograph.]
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+THE UNDESPAIRING NORMAN.
+
+
+"The northward current of the eastern shore of Lake Michigan and
+the southward current of the western shore," says a writer exact in
+knowledge, "naturally made the St. Joseph portage a return route to
+Canada, and the Chicago portage an outbound one." But though La Salle
+was a careful observer and must have known that what was then called the
+Chekago River afforded a very short carrying to the Desplaines or upper
+Illinois, he saw fit to use the St. Joseph both coming and going.
+
+His march to Fort Frontenac he afterwards described in a letter to one
+of the creditors interested in his discoveries.
+
+"Though the thaws of approaching spring greatly increased the difficulty
+of the way, interrupted as it was everywhere by marshes and rivers, to
+say nothing of the length of the journey, which is about five hundred
+leagues in a direct line, and the danger of meeting Indians of four or
+five different nations, through whose country we were to pass, as well
+as an Iroquois army which we knew was coming that way; though we must
+suffer all the time from hunger; sleep on the open ground, and often
+without food; watch by night and march by day, loaded with baggage, such
+as blanket, clothing, kettle, hatchet, gun, powder, lead, and skins to
+make moccasins; sometimes pushing through thickets, sometimes climbing
+rocks covered with ice and snow; sometimes wading whole days through
+marshes where the water was waist deep or even more,--all this did not
+prevent me from going to Fort Frontenac to bring back the things we
+needed and to learn myself what had become of my vessel."
+
+Carrying their canoes where the river was frozen, and finally leaving
+them hidden near where the town of Joliet now stands, La Salle and his
+men pushed on until they reached the fort built at the mouth of the St.
+Joseph. Here he found the two voyageurs he had sent to search for the
+Griffin. They said they had been around the lake and could learn nothing
+of her. He then directed them to Tonty, while he marched up the eastern
+shore. This Michigan region was debatable ground among the Indians,
+where they met to fight; and he left significant marks on the trees, to
+make prowlers think he had a large war party. A dozen or twenty roving
+savages, ready to pounce like ferocious wildcats on a camp, always
+peeled white places on the trees, and cut pictures there of their totem,
+or tribe mark, and the scalps and prisoners they had taken. They
+respected a company more numerous than themselves, and avoided it.
+
+Stopping to nurse the sick when some fell ill of exposure, or to build
+canoes when canoes were needed, La Salle did not reach Fort Niagara
+until Easter, and it was May when Fort Frontenac came into view.
+
+No man ever suffered more from treachery. Before he could get
+together the supplies he needed, trouble after trouble fell upon him.
+The men that Tonty had sent to tell him about the destruction of Fort
+Crevecoeur were followed by others who brought word that the deserters
+had destroyed his forts at the St. Joseph River and Niagara, and carried
+off all the goods. The Griffin was certainly lost. And before going back
+to the Illinois country he was obliged to chase these fellows and take
+from them what could be recovered. But when everybody else seemed
+to be against him, it was much comfort to remember he had a faithful
+lieutenant while the copper-handed Italian lived.
+
+La Salle gathered twenty-five men of trades useful to him, and another
+outfit with all that he needed for a ship, having made new arrangements
+with his creditors; and going by way of Michilimackinac, he reached the
+St. Joseph early in November.
+
+Whenever, in our own day, we see the Kankakee still gliding along its
+rocky bed, or the solemn Illinois spreading betwixt wooded banks, it is
+easy to imagine a birch canoe just appearing around a bend, carrying La
+Salle or Tonty, and rowed by buckskin-clad voyageurs. On the Kankakee
+thousands of buffaloes filled the plains, and La Salle's party killed
+many, preparing the flesh in dried flakes by smoking it.
+
+The buffaloes were left behind when they approached the great town on
+the Illinois. La Salle glanced up at the rock he wanted fortified, but
+no palisade or Frenchman was to be seen.
+
+"It seems very quiet," he said to the men in his canoe, "and we have not
+passed a hunter. There--there is the meadow where the town stood; but
+where is the town?"
+
+Heaps of ashes, charred poles, broken scaffolds, wolves prowling where
+papooses had played, crows whirling in black clouds or sitting in rows
+on naked branches, bones,--a horrible waste plain had taken the place of
+the town.
+
+The Frenchmen scattered over it, eagerly seeking some trace of Tonty and
+his companions. They labored all day, until the sun set, among dreadful
+sights which they could never forget, without finding any clue to his
+fate.
+
+They piled charred wood together and made a fire and camped among ruins.
+But La Salle lay awake all night, watching the sharp-pointed autumn
+stars march overhead, and suffering what must have seemed the most
+unendurable of all his losses.
+
+Determined not to give up his friend, he rose next morning and helped
+the men hide their heavy freight in the rocks, leaving two of them to
+hide with and guard it, and went on down the Illinois River. On one bank
+the retreat of the invaded tribe could be traced, and on the other the
+dead camp-fires of the Iroquois who had followed them. But of Tonty and
+his Frenchmen there was still no sign.
+
+La Salle saw the ruins of Fort Crevecoeur and his deserted vessel. And
+so searching he came to the mouth of the Illinois and saw for the first
+time that river of his ambitions, the Mississippi. There he turned back,
+leaving a letter tied to a tree, on the chance of its sometime falling
+into the hands of Tonty. There was nothing to do but to take his men and
+goods from among the rocks near the destroyed town and return to Fort
+Miamis, on the St. Joseph, which some of his followers had rebuilt. The
+winter was upon them.
+
+La Salle never sat and brooded over trouble. He was a man of action.
+Shut in with his men and goods, and obliged to wait until spring
+permitted him to take the next step, he began at once to work on Indian
+hunters, and to draw their tribes towards forming a settlement around
+the rock he meant to fortify on the Illinois. Had he been able to attach
+turbulent voyageurs to him as he attached native tribes, his heroic life
+would have ended in success even beyond his dreams. Tonty could better
+deal with ignorant men, his military training standing him in good
+stead; yet Tonty dared scarcely trust a voyageur out of his sight.
+
+While Tonty and La Salle were passing through these adventures, the
+Recollet father, Louis Hennepin, and his two companions, sent by La
+Salle, explored the upper Mississippi. One of these was named Michael
+Ako; the other, Du Gay, a man from Picardy in France.
+
+They left Fort Crevecoeur on the last day of February, twenty-four
+hours before La Salle started northward, and entered the Mississippi on
+the 12th of March. The great food-stocked stream afforded them plenty of
+game, wild turkeys, buffaloes, deer, and fish. The adventurers excused
+themselves from observing the Lenten season set apart by the Church for
+fasting; but Father Hennepin said prayers several times a day. He was
+a great robust Fleming, with almost as much endurance as that hardy
+Norman, La Salle.
+
+They had paddled about a month up river through the region where
+Marquette and Jolliet had descended, when one afternoon they stopped to
+repair their canoe and cook a wild turkey. Hennepin, with his sleeves
+rolled back, was daubing the canoe with pitch, and the others were busy
+at the fire, when a war whoop, followed by continuous yelling, echoed
+from forest to forest, and a hundred and twenty naked Sioux or Dacotah
+Indians sprang out of boats to seize them. It was no use for Father
+Hennepin to show a peace-pipe or offer fine tobacco. The Frenchmen were
+prisoners. And when these savages learned by questioning with signs, and
+by drawing on the sand with a stick, that the Miamis, whom they were
+pursuing to fight, were far eastward out of their reach, three or four
+old warriors laid their hands on Hennepin's shaven crown and began to
+cry and howl like little boys.
+
+[Illustration: Totem of the Sioux.]
+
+The friar in his long gray capote or hooded garment, which fell to his
+feet, girt about the waist by a rope called the cord of St. Francis,
+stood, with bare toes showing on his sandals, inclining his fat head
+with sympathy. He took out his handkerchief and wiped the old men's
+faces. Du Gay and Ako, in spite of the peril, laughed to see him daub
+the war paint.
+
+"The good father hath no suspicion that these old wretches are dooming
+him to death," said Ako to Du Gay.
+
+It appeared afterwards that this was what the ceremony meant. For
+several days the Frenchmen, carried northward in their captors' boats,
+expected to die. No calumet was smoked with them; and every night one
+of the old chiefs, named Aquipaguetin, who had lost a son in war and
+formed a particular intention of taking somebody's scalp for solace,
+sat by the prisoners stroking them and howling by the hour. One night
+when the Frenchmen were forced to make their fire at the end of the
+camp, Aquipaguetin sent word that he meant to finish them without more
+delay. But they gave him some goods out of the store La Salle had sent
+with them, and he changed his mind and concluded to wait awhile. He
+carried the bones of one of his dead relations, dried and wrapped in
+skins gaily ornamented with porcupine-quill work; and it was his custom
+to lay these bones before the tribe and request that everybody blow
+smoke on them. Of the Frenchmen, however, he demanded hatchets, beads,
+and cloth. This cunning old Sioux wanted to get all he could before the
+party reached their villages, where the spoil would be divided.
+
+Nineteen days after their capture the prisoners were brought to a place
+which is now the site of St. Paul in the state of Minnesota, where the
+Sioux disbanded, scattering to their separate towns. They had finally
+smoked the peace-pipe with the Frenchmen; and now, fortunately without
+disagreement, portioned their white captives and distributed the goods.
+Father Hennepin was given to Aquipaguetin, who promptly adopted him
+as a son. The Flemish friar saw with disgust his gold-embroidered
+vestments, which a missionary always carried with him for the impressive
+celebration of mass, displayed on savage backs and greatly admired.
+
+The explorers were really in the way of seeing as much of the
+upper Mississippi as they could desire. They were far north of the
+Wisconsin's mouth, where white men first entered the great river.
+The young Mississippi, clear as a mountain stream, gathered many small
+tributaries. St. Peter's joined it from a blue-earth channel. This
+rugged northern world was wonderfully beautiful, with valleys and
+heights and rocks and waterfalls.
+
+The Sioux were tall, well-made Indians, and so active that the smaller
+Frenchmen could hardly keep up with them on the march. They sometimes
+carried Du Gay and Ako over streams, but the robust friar they forced to
+wade or swim; and when he lagged lame-footed with exhaustion across the
+prairies, they set fire to grass behind him, obliging him to take to his
+heels with them or burn. By adoption into the family of Aquipaguetin
+he had a large relationship thrust upon him, for the old weeper had
+many wives and children and other kindred. Hennepin indeed felt that
+he was not needed and might at any time be disposed of. He never had
+that confidence in his father Aquipaguetin which a son should repose
+in a parent.
+
+He was separated from Ako and Du Gay, who were taken to other villages.
+By the time he reached father Aquepaguetin's house he was so exhausted,
+and his legs, cut by ice in the streams, were so swollen that he fell
+down on a bear robe. The village was on an island in a sheet of water
+afterwards called Lake Buade. Hennepin was kindly received by his new
+family, who fed him as well as they were able, for the Sioux had little
+food when they were not hunting. Seeing him so feeble, they gave him an
+Indian sweating bath, which he found good for his health. They made a
+lodge of skins so tight that it would hold heat, and put into it stones
+baked to a white heat. On these they poured water and shut Hennepin in
+the steam until he sweated freely.
+
+The Sioux had two kinds of lodges--one somewhat resembling those of the
+Illinois, the other a cone of poles with skins stretched around, called
+a tepee.
+
+Father Hennepin did little missionary work among these Indians. He
+suffered much from hunger, being a man who loved good cheer. But the
+tribes went on a buffalo hunt in July and killed plenty of meat. All
+that northern world was then clothed in vivid verdure. Honeysuckles and
+wild grapevines made the woods fragrant. The gentian, which jealously
+closes its blue-fringed cup from the human eye, grew close to the lakes.
+Captive though the Frenchmen were, they could not help enjoying the
+evening camp-fire with its weird flickerings against the dark of savage
+forests, the heat-lightning which heralded or followed storms, the
+waters, clear, as if filtered through icebergs, dashing in foam over
+mossy rocks.
+
+They met during the buffalo hunt, and it was about this time that some
+"spirits," or white men, were heard of, coming from Lake Superior. These
+proved to be the great ranger Greysolon du Lhut and four other
+Frenchmen.
+
+This man, cousin to Tonty, passed nearly his whole life in the woods,
+going from Indian town to Indian town, or planting outposts of his
+own in the wilderness. Occasionally he went to France, and the king's
+magnificence at Versailles was endured by him until he could gain some
+desired point from the colonial minister and hurry back. The government
+relied on him to keep lawless coureurs de bois within bounds, and he
+traded with nearly all the western tribes. When Greysolon du Lhut
+appeared, the Sioux treated their prisoners with deference; and from
+that time Hennepin, Du Gay, and Ako went where they pleased.
+
+They seemed to have had no thought of returning to Fort Crevecoeur.
+In those days when each man took his individual life in his hands and
+guarded it in ways which seemed best to him, it was often expedient to
+change one's plan of action. About the time that Tonty was obliged to
+abandon Fort Crevecoeur, Hennepin and his companions set off eastward
+with Greysolon du Lhut's party. Hennepin sailed for France as soon as he
+could and wrote a book about his adventures. It was one of La Salle's
+misfortunes that this friar should finally even lay claim to discovering
+the mouth of the Mississippi, adding the glory of that to these real
+adventures on its upper waters.
+
+The first of March, La Salle, with a number of the men he had gathered,
+started from Fort Miamis to the Illinois country. The prairies were one
+dazzling expanse of snow, and as the party slid along on the broad,
+flat snowshoes to which their feet were strapped, some of them were
+so blinded that the pain in their eyes became unendurable. These were
+obliged to camp in the edge of some woods, while the rest went on.
+
+La Salle himself was sitting in darkness while the spring sun struck a
+million sparkles from a world yet locked in winter. The wind chilled
+his back, and he spread his hands to the camp blaze. In the torment
+of snow-blindness he wondered whether Tonty was treading these white
+wastes, seeking him, or lying dead of Indian wounds under the snow
+crust. The talk of the other snow-blinded men, sitting about or
+stretched with their feet to the fire, was lost on his ear. Yet his one
+faithful servant, who went with him on all his journeys, could not see
+anything but calm fortitude on his face as he lifted it at the approach
+of snowshoes.
+
+"I cannot see you, Hunaut," said La Salle. "Did you find some pine
+leaves?"
+
+"I found some, monsieur."
+
+"Steep them as soon as you can for the men's eyes."
+
+"I wish to tell you, monsieur," the man said as he went about his task
+with a snow-filled kettle, "that I found also a party of Fox Indians
+from Green Bay, and they gave me news of Monsieur de Tonty."
+
+Hunaut looked at the long, pale face of his master and saw the under lip
+tremble and twitch.
+
+"You know I am much bound to Monsieur de Tonty. Is he alive?"
+
+"He is alive, monsieur. He has been obliged to pass the winter at Green
+Bay. Father Hennepin has also passed through that country on his way to
+Montreal."
+
+La Salle felt his troubles melt with the unlocking of winter. The brief
+but agonizing snow-blindness passed away with a thaw; and, overtaking
+his other men, he soon met the returning Illinois tribe and began the
+Indian settlement around the rock he intended to fortify.
+
+Already the Miami tribe was following him, and he drew them into an
+alliance with the Illinois, impressively founding the principality soon
+to grow there. This eloquent Norman Frenchman had gifts in height and
+the large bone and sinew of Normandy, which his Indian allies always
+admired. And he well knew where to impress his talk with coats, shirts,
+guns, and hunting-knives. As his holdings of land in Canada were made
+his stepping-stones toward the west, so the footing he gained at Fort
+Miamis and in the Illinois country was to be used in discovering the
+real course of the Mississippi and taking possession of its vast basin.
+
+It was the end of May before he met Tonty at St. Ignace; Italian and
+Frenchman coming together with outstretched arms and embracing. Tonty's
+black eyes were full of tears, but La Salle told his reverses as calmly
+as if they were another man's.
+
+"Any one else," said Father Membre, who stood by, "would abandon the
+enterprise, but Monsieur de la Salle has no equal for constancy of
+purpose."
+
+"But where is Father Ribourde?" La Salle inquired, missing the other
+Recollet.
+
+Tonty told him sorrowfully how Father Ribourde had gone into the woods
+when his party camped, after being driven up river in a leaky boat by
+the Iroquois; how they had waited and searched for him, and were finally
+made aware that a band of prowling Kickapoos had murdered him.
+
+Tonty had aimed at Green Bay by the Chicago portage, and tramped along
+the west shore of Lake Michigan, having found it impossible to patch the
+boat.
+
+"We were nearly starved," he said; "but we found a few ears of corn and
+some frozen squashes in a deserted Indian town. When we reached the bay
+we found an old canoe and mended it; but as soon as we were on the water
+there rose a northwest wind with driving snow, which lasted nearly five
+days. We ate all our food, and, not knowing what to do, turned back to
+the deserted town to die by a warm fire in one of the wigwams. On the
+way the bay froze. We camped to make moccasins out of Father Membre's
+cloak. I was angry at Etienne Renault for not finishing his; but he
+excused himself on account of illness, having a great oppression of the
+stomach, caused by eating a piece of an Indian rawhide shield which he
+could not digest. His delay proved our salvation, for the next day, as I
+was urging him to finish the moccasins, a party of Ottawas saw the smoke
+of our fire and came to us. We gave them such a welcome as never was
+seen before. They took us into their canoes and carried us to an Indian
+village only two leagues off. All the Indians took pleasure in sending
+us food; so, after thirty-four days of starvation, we found our famine
+turned to abundance."
+
+Tonty and La Salle, with their followers, paddled the thousand miles to
+Fort Frontenac, to make another start into the wilderness.
+
+La Salle was now determined to keep his men together. He set down many
+of his experiences and thoughts in letters which have been kept; so we
+know at this day what was in the great explorer's mind, and how dear he
+held "Monsieur de Tonty, who is full of zeal."
+
+On his return to the wilderness with another equipment, he went around
+the head of Lake Michigan and made the short Chicago portage to the
+Desplaines River. Entering by this branch the frozen Illinois, they
+dragged their canoes on sledges past the site of the town and reached
+open water below Peoria Lake. La Salle gave up the plan of building a
+ship, and determined to go on in his canoes to the mouth of the
+Mississippi.
+
+So, pausing to hunt when game was needed, his company of fifty-four
+persons entered the great river, saw the Missouri rushing into it--muddy
+current and clear northern stream flowing alongside until the waters
+mingled. They met and overawed the Indians on both shores, building
+several stockades. The broad river seemed to fill a valley, doubling and
+winding upon itself with innumerable curves, in its solemn and lonely
+stretches. Huge pieces of low-lying bank crumbled and fell in with
+splashes, for the Mississippi ceaselessly eats away its own shore.
+
+A hundred leagues below the mouth of the Arkansas they came to a swamp
+on the west side. Behind this swamp, they had been told, might be found
+the Arkansas tribe's great town. La Salle sent Tonty and Father Membre,
+with some voyageurs, to make friends with the Indians and bring him word
+about the town.
+
+Tonty had seen nothing like it in the New World. The houses were large
+and square, of sun-baked brick, with a dome of canes overhead. The two
+largest were the chief's house and the temple. Doors were the only
+openings. Tonty and the friar were taken in where the chief sat on a
+bedstead with his squaws, and sixty old men, in white mulberry bark
+cloaks, squatted by with the dignity of a council. The wives, in order
+to honor the sovereign, yelled.
+
+The temple was a place where dead chiefs' bones were kept. A mud wall
+built around it was ornamented with skulls. The inside was very rough.
+Something like an altar stood in the center of the floor; and a fire of
+logs was kept burning before it, and never allowed to go out, filling
+the place with smoke, and irritating the eyes of two old Indians who
+tended it in half darkness. The Frenchmen were not allowed to look into
+a secret place where the temple treasure was kept. But, hearing it
+consisted of pearls and trinkets, Tonty conjectured the Indians had got
+it from the Spanish. This tribe was not unlike the Aztecs of Mexico.
+The chief came in barbaric grandeur to visit La Salle, dressed in white,
+having fans carried before him, and a plate of burnished copper to
+represent the sun, for these lower Mississippians were sun-worshipers.
+
+With gifts and the grave consideration which instantly won Indians, La
+Salle moved from tribe to tribe towards the Gulf. Red River pulsed upon
+the course like a discharging artery. The sluggish alligator woke from
+the ooze and poked up his snout at the canoes. "He is," says a quaint
+old writer who made that journey afterwards, "the most frightful
+master-fish that can be seen. I saw one that was as large as half a
+hogshead. There are some, they say, as large as a hogshead and twelve
+to fifteen feet long. I have no doubt they would swallow up a man if
+they caught him."
+
+[Illustration: La Salle at the Mouth of the Mississippi.]
+
+In April La Salle reached his goal. He found that the Mississippi
+divided its current into three strands and entered the Gulf through
+three mouths. He separated his party; La Salle took the west passage,
+and Tonty and another lieutenant the middle and the east. At the Gulf of
+Mexico they came together again, and with solemn ceremonies claimed for
+France all the country along the great river's entire length, and far
+eastward and westward, calling it Louisiana, in honor of King Louis XIV.
+A metal plate, bearing the arms of France, the king's name, and the date
+of the discovery, was fixed on a pillar in the shifting soil.
+
+Hardy as he was, La Salle sometimes fell ill from the great exposures
+he endured. And more than once he was poisoned by some revengeful
+voyageur. It was not until the December following his discovery of the
+Mississippi's mouth that he realized his plan of fortifying the rock
+on the Illinois River. He and Tonty delighted in it, calling it Fort
+St. Louis of the Illinois. Storehouses and quarters for a garrison rose
+around its edges, protected by a palisade. A windlass was rigged to draw
+water from the river below. On the northeast corner of the rock a low
+earthwork remains to this day.
+
+Around this natural castle the Indian tribes gathered to La Salle, as to
+a sovereign,--Miamis, Abenakis, and Shawanoes, from countries eastward,
+and the Illinois returned to spread over their beloved meadow. Instead
+of one town, many towns of log, or rush, or bark lodges could be seen
+from the summit of the Rock. Years afterwards the French still spoke of
+this fortress as Le Rocher. A little principality of twenty thousand
+inhabitants, strong enough to repel any attack of the Iroquois, thus
+helped to guard it. La Salle meant to supply his people with goods and
+give them a market for their furs. At this time he could almost see the
+success of his mighty enterprise assured; he could reasonably count on
+strengthening his stockades along the Mississippi, and on building near
+its mouth a city which would protect the entire west and give an outlet
+to the undeveloped wealth of the continent.
+
+[Illustration: Louis XIV., King of France.]
+
+In the flush of his discovery and success La Salle went back to France,
+leaving Tonty in charge of the Rock and the gathering Indian nations,
+and laid his actual achievements before the king, asking for help. This
+was made necessary by the change in the colonial government, which had
+removed his friend Count Frontenac and left him at the mercy of enemies.
+
+The king was not slow to see the capacity of this wonderful man, so shy
+of civilization that he lodged in a poor street, carrying with him the
+very breath of the wilderness. La Salle asked for two ships; the king
+gave him four; and many people and supplies were gathered to colonize
+and stock the west.
+
+It was La Salle's intention to sail by way of the West Indies, cross the
+Gulf of Mexico, and enter the mouth of the Mississippi. But the Gulf of
+Mexico is rimmed with low marshy land, and he had never seen the mouth
+of the Mississippi from seaward. His unfamiliarity with the coast, or
+night, or fog cheated him of his destination, and the colony was landed
+four hundred miles west of it, in a place called Matagorda Bay, in
+Texas, which then belonged to the Spaniards. Although at the time of
+discovery he had taken the latitude of that exact spot where he set the
+post, he had been unable to determine the longitude; any lagoon might be
+an opening of the triple mouth he sought.
+
+La Salle's brother, a priest, who sailed with him on this voyage,
+testified afterwards that the explorer died believing he was near the
+mouth of the Mississippi. Whatever may have been his thoughts, the
+undespairing Norman grappled with his troubles in the usual way.
+One of his vessels had been captured by the Spanish. Another had been
+wrecked in the bay by seamen who were willing to injure him. These
+contained supplies most needed for the colony. The third sailed away and
+left him; and his own little ship, a gift of the king for his use along
+the coast, was sunk by careless men while he was absent searching
+northward for the Mississippi.
+
+Many of the colonists fell sick and died. Men turned sullen and tried to
+desert. Some went hunting and were never seen again. Indians, who dare
+not openly attack, skulked near and set the prairie on fire; and that
+was a sight of magnificence, the earth seeming to burn like a furnace,
+or, far as the eye could follow them, billows of flame rushing as across
+a fire sea. But La Salle was wise, and cut the grass close around his
+powder and camp.
+
+[Illustration: La Salle's Map of Texas.]
+
+Water, plains, trees combined endlessly, like the pieces of a
+kaleidoscope, to confuse him in his search. Tonty was not at hand to
+take care of the colony while he groped for the lost river. He moved his
+wretched people from their camp, with all goods saved off the wreck in
+the bay, to a better site for a temporary fort, on rising ground. The
+carpenters proved good for nothing. La Salle himself planned buildings
+and marked out mortises on the logs. First a large house roofed with
+hides, and divided into apartments, was finished to shelter all.
+Separate houses were afterwards built for the women and girls, and
+barracks or rougher cells for the men. A little chapel was finally
+added. And when high-pointed palisades surrounded the whole, La Salle,
+perhaps thinking of his invincible rock on the Illinois and the
+faithfulness of his copper-handed lieutenant guarding it, called this
+outpost also Fort St. Louis. Cannon were mounted at the four corners of
+the large house. As the balls were lost, they were loaded with bullets
+in bags.
+
+Behind, the prairies stretched away to forests. In front rolled the bay,
+with the restless ever-heaving motion of the Mexican Gulf. A delicious
+salty air, like the breath of perpetual spring, blew in, tingling the
+skin of the sulkiest adventurer with delight in this virgin world.
+Fierce northers must beat upon the colonists, and the languors of summer
+must in time follow; and they were homesick, always watching for sails.
+Yet they had no lack of food. Oysters were so plentiful in the bay that
+they could not wade without cutting their feet with the shells. Though
+the alligator pushed his ugly snout and ridgy back out of lagoons, and
+horned frogs frightened the children, and the rattlesnake was to be
+avoided where it lay coiled in the grass, game of all kinds abounded.
+Every man was obliged to hunt, and every woman and child to help smoke
+the meat. Even the priests took guns in their hands. Father Membre
+had brought some buffalo traditions from the Illinois country. He was
+of Father Hennepin's opinion that this wild creature might be trained
+to draw the plow, and he had faith that benevolence was concealed
+behind its wicked eyes.
+
+As Father Membre stalked along the prairie with the hunters, his capote
+tucked up out of his way on its cord, one of the men shot a buffalo and
+it dropped. The buffaloes rarely fell at once, even when wounded to
+death, unless hit in the spine. Father Membre approached it curiously.
+
+"Come back, Father!" shouted the hunters.
+
+Father Membre touched it gently with his gun.
+
+"Run, Father, run!" cried the hunters.
+
+"It is dead," asserted Father Membre. "I will rest my gun across its
+carcass to steady my aim at the other buffaloes."
+
+He knelt to rest his gun across its back.
+
+The great beast heaved convulsively to its feet and made a dash at the
+Recollet. It sent him revolving heels over head. But Father Membre got
+up, and, spreading his capote in both hands, danced in front of the
+buffalo to head it off from escaping. At that, with a bellow, the shaggy
+creature charged over him across the prairie, dropping to its knees and
+dying before the frightened hunters could lift the friar from the ground.
+
+"Are you hurt, Father?" they all asked, supporting him, and finding it
+impossible to keep from laughing as he sat up, with his reverend face
+skinned and his capote nearly torn off.
+
+"Not unto death," responded Father Membre, brushing grass and dirty hoof
+prints from his garment. "But it hath been greatly impressed on my mind
+that this ox-savage is no fit beast for the plow. Nor will I longer
+counsel our women to coax the wild cows to a milking. It is well to
+adapt to our needs the beasts of a country," said Father Membre, wiping
+blood from his face. "But this buffalo creature hath disappointed me!"
+
+La Salle was prostrated through the month of November. But by Christmas
+he was able to set out on a final search from which he did not intend
+to return until he found the Mississippi. All hands in the fort were
+busied on the outfit necessary for the party. Clothes were made of sails
+recovered from one of the wrecked vessels. Eighteen men were to follow
+La Salle, among them his elder brother, the Abbe Cavelier. Some had on
+the remains of garments they had worn in France, and others were dressed
+in deer or buffalo skins. He had bought five horses of the Indians to
+carry the baggage.
+
+At midnight on Christmas Eve everybody crowded into the small fortress
+chapel. The priests, celebrating mass, moved before the altar in such
+gold-embroidered vestments as they had, and the light of torches
+illuminated the rough log walls. Those who were to stay and keep the
+outpost, literally lost in the wilderness, were on their knees weeping.
+Those who were to go knelt also, with the dread of an awful uncertainty
+in their minds. The faithful ones foresaw worse than peril from forests
+and waters and savages, for La Salle could not leave behind all the
+villains with whom he was obliged to serve himself. He alone showed the
+composure of a man who never despairs. If he had positively known that
+he was setting out upon a fatal journey,--that he was undertaking his
+last march through the wilderness,--the mass lights would still have
+shown the firm face of a man who did not turn back from any enterprise.
+The very existence of these people who had come out to the New World
+with him depended on his success. Whatever lay in the road he had to
+encounter it. The most splendid lives may progress and end through what
+we call tragedy; but it is better to die in the very stress of achievement
+than to stretch a poor existence through a century. The contagion of his
+hardihood stole out like the Christmas incense and spread through the
+chapel.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+FRENCH SETTLEMENTS.
+
+
+"It was the establishment of military posts throughout this vast valley
+that eventually brought on a life struggle between the English and the
+French," says a historian.
+
+At first the only spot of civilization in boundless wilderness was
+Tonty's little fort on the Illinois. Protected by it, the Indians went
+hunting and brought in buffalo skins and meat; their women planted
+and reaped maize; children were born; days came and went; autumn haze
+made the distances pearly; winter snow lay on the wigwams; men ran on
+snowshoes; and papooses shouted on the frozen river. Still no news came
+from La Salle.
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF THE FRENCH SETTLEMENTS.]
+
+Tonty had made a journey to the mouth of the Mississippi to meet him,
+after he landed with his colony, searching thirty leagues in each
+direction along the coast. La Salle was at that time groping through a
+maze of lagoons in Texas. Tonty, with his men, waded swamps to their
+necks, enduring more suffering than he had ever endured in his life
+before. This was in February of the year 1686. Finding it impossible to
+reach La Salle, who must be wandering somewhere on the Gulf of Mexico,
+Tonty wrote a letter to him, intrusting it to the hands of an Indian
+chief, with directions that it be delivered when the explorer appeared.
+He also left a couple of men who were willing to wait in the Arkansas
+villages to meet La Salle.
+
+Two years passed before those men brought positive proof of the
+undespairing Norman's fate. The remnant of the party that started with
+La Salle from Fort St. Louis of Texas spent one winter at Fort St. Louis
+of the Illinois, bringing word that they had left their leader in good
+health on the coast. The Abbe Cavelier even collected furs in his
+brother's name, and went on to France, carrying his secret with him.
+
+La Salle had been assassinated on the Trinity River, soon after setting
+out on his last determined search for the Mississippi. The eighteenth
+day of March, 1687, some of his brutal voyageurs hid themselves in
+bushes and shot him.
+
+So slowly did events move then, and so powerless was man, an atom in the
+wilderness, that the great-hearted Italian, weeping aloud in rage and
+grief, realized that La Salle's bones had been bleaching a year and a
+half before the news of his death reached his lieutenant. It was not
+known that La Salle received burial. The wretches who assassinated him
+threw him into some brush. It was a satisfaction to Tonty that they all
+perished miserably afterwards; those who survived quarrels among
+themselves being killed by the Indians.
+
+The undespairing Norman died instantly, without feeling or admitting
+defeat. And he was not defeated. Though his colony--including Father
+Membre, who had been so long with him--perished by the hands of the
+Indians in Texas, in spite of Tonty's second journey to relieve them,
+his plan of settlements from the great lakes to the mouth of the
+Mississippi became a reality.
+
+Down from Canada came two of the eleven Le Moyne brothers, D'Iberville
+and Bienville, fine fighting sons of a powerful colonial family, with
+royal permission to found near the great river's mouth that city which
+had been La Salle's dream. Fourteen years after La Salle's death, while
+D'Iberville was exploring for a site, the old chief, to whom Tonty had
+given a letter for La Salle, brought it carefully wrapped and delivered
+it into the hands of La Salle's more fortunate successor.
+
+Tonty was associated with Le Moyne D'Iberville in these labors around
+the Gulf.
+
+[Illustration: Autograph of Le Moyne D'Iberville.]
+
+A long peninsula betwixt the Mississippi and Kaskaskia Rivers, known
+since as the American Bottom, lured away Indians from the great town on
+the Illinois. The new settlement founded on this peninsula was called
+Kaskaskia, for one of the tribes. As other posts sprung into existence,
+Fort St. Louis was less needed. "As early as 1712," we are told, "land
+titles were issued for a common field in Kaskaskia. Traders had already
+opened a commerce in skins and furs with the remote post of Isle
+Dauphine in Mobile Bay." Settlements were firmly established. By 1720
+the luxuries of Europe came into the great tract taken by La Salle in
+the name of King Louis and called Louisiana.
+
+Twelve years after La Salle's death a missionary named St. Cosme (Sant'
+Come) journeyed from Canada in a party guided by Tonty. St. Cosme has
+left this record of the man with the copper hand:--
+
+"He guided us as far as the Arkansas and gave us much pleasure on the
+way, winning friendship of some savages and intimidating others who from
+jealousy or desire to plunder opposed the voyage; not only doing the
+duty of a brave man but that of a missionary. He quieted the voyageurs,
+by whom he was generally loved, and supported us by his example in
+devotion."
+
+On the Chicago portage a little boy, given to the missionary perhaps
+because he was an orphan and the western country offered him the best
+chances in life, started eagerly ahead, though he was told to wait. The
+rest of the party, having goods and canoes to carry from the Chicago
+River to the Desplaines, lost sight of him, and he was never seen again.
+Autumn grass grew tall over the marshy portage, but they dared not set
+it afire, though his fate was doubtless hidden in that grass. The party
+divided and searched for him, calling and firing guns. Three days they
+searched, and daring to wait no longer, for it was November and the
+river ready to glaze with ice, they left him to some French people at
+the post of Chicago. But the child was not found. He disappeared and no
+one ever knew what became of him.
+
+Like this is Henri de Tonty's disappearance from history. The records
+show him working with Le Moyne D'Iberville and Le Moyne de Bienville to
+found New Orleans and Mobile, pushing the enterprises which La Salle had
+begun. He has been blamed with the misbehavior of a relative of his,
+Alphonse de Tonty, who got into disgrace at the post of Detroit. Little
+justice has been done to the memory of this man, who should not be
+forgotten in the west. So quietly did he slip out of life that his
+burial place is unknown. Some people believe that he came back to the
+Rock long after its buildings were dismantled and it had ceased to be
+Fort St. Louis of the Illinois. Others say he died in Mobile. But it is
+probable that both La Salle and Tonty left their bodies to the
+wilderness which their invincible spirits had conquered.
+
+After the settlement of Kaskaskia a strong fortress was built sixteen
+miles above, on the same side of the Mississippi. The king of France
+spent a million crowns strengthening this place, which was called Fort
+Chartres. Its massive walls, inclosing four acres, and its buildings and
+arched gateway were like some medieval stronghold strangely transplanted
+from the Old World. White uniformed troops paraded. A village sprang up
+around it. Fort Chartres was the center of government until Kaskaskia
+became the first capital of the Illinois territory. Applications for
+land had to be made at this post. Indians on the Mississippi, for it was
+a little distance from the shore, heard drumbeat and sunset gun, and
+were proud of going in and out of its mighty gateway under the white
+flag of France.
+
+Other villages began on the eastern bank of the river--Cahokia, opposite
+the present city of St. Louis, and Prairie du Rocher, nearer Kaskaskia.
+Ste. Genevieve also was built in what is now the state of Missouri, on
+land which then was claimed by the Spaniards. There was a Post of
+Natchitoches on the Red River, as well as a Post of Washita on the
+Washita River. Settlements were also founded upon La Fourche and Fausse
+Riviere above New Orleans.
+
+"The finest country we have seen," wrote one of the adventurers in those
+days, "is all from Chicago to the Tamaroas. It is nothing but prairie
+and clumps of wood as far as you can see. The Tamaroas are eight leagues
+from the Illinois." Chicago was a landing place and portage from the
+great lakes long before a stockade with a blockhouse was built called
+Fort Dearborn.
+
+"Monjolly," wrote the same adventurer, "or Mount Jolliet, is a mound of
+earth on the prairie on the right side of the Illinois River as you go
+down, elevated about thirty feet. The Indians say at the time of the
+great deluge one of their ancestors escaped, and this little mountain is
+his canoe which he turned over there."
+
+La Salle had learned from the Iroquois about the Ohio River. But the
+region through which it flowed to the Mississippi remained for a long
+while an unbroken wilderness. The English settlements on their strip of
+Atlantic coast, however, and the French settlements in the west, reached
+gradually out over this territory and met and grappled. Whichever power
+got and kept the mastery of the west would get the mastery of the
+continent.
+
+The territory of Kentucky, like that of Michigan, was owned by no tribe
+of Indians. "It was the common hunting and fighting ground of Ohio
+tribes on the north and Cherokees and Chickasaws on the south."
+
+There was indeed one exception to the uninhabited state of all that land
+stretching betwixt the Alleghanies and the Mississippi. Vincennes, now
+a town of Indiana, was, after Kaskaskia, the oldest place in the west.
+This isolated post is said to have been founded by French soldiers and
+emigrants. Five thousand acres were devoted to the common field. De
+Vincennes, for whom it was named, was a nephew of Louis Jolliet. And
+while it is not at all certain that he founded the post, he doubtless
+sojourned there in the Indiana country during his roving life. A small
+stockade on the site of the town of Fort Wayne is said to have been
+built by him.
+
+French settlements began to extend southward from Lake Erie to the head
+waters of the Ohio, like a chain to check the English. Presqu' Isle, now
+Erie, Pennsylvania, was founded about the same time as Vincennes.
+
+A French settler built his house in an inclosure of two or three acres.
+The unvarying model was one story high, with porches or galleries
+surrounding it. Wooden walls were filled and daubed with a solid mass of
+what was called cat-and-clay, a mixture of mortar and chopped straw or
+Spanish moss. The chimney was of the same materials, shaped by four long
+corner posts, wide apart below, and nearer together at the top.
+
+As fast as children grew up and married they built their cottages
+in their father's yard; and so it went on, until with children and
+grandchildren and great-grandchildren, a small village accumulated
+around one old couple.
+
+The French were not anxious to obtain grants of the rich wild land.
+Every settlement had its common field, large or small, as was desired.
+A portion of this field was given to each person in the village for his
+own, and he was obliged to cultivate it and raise food for his family.
+If a man neglected his ground, it was taken from him. A large tract of
+land called the common pasture was also inclosed for everybody's cattle
+to graze in.
+
+Sometimes houses were set facing one court, or center, like a camp, for
+defense. But generally the French had little trouble with their savage
+neighbors, who took very kindly to them. The story of western settlement
+is not that dreadful story of continual wars with Indians which reddens
+the pages of eastern colonies. The French were gay people. They loved to
+dance and hunt and spend their time in amusements. While the serious,
+stubborn English were grubbing out the foundations of great states on
+the Atlantic coast, it must be confessed these happy folks cared little
+about developing the rich Mississippi valley.
+
+During all its early occupation this hospitable land abounded with game.
+Though in November the buffaloes became so lean that only their tongues
+were eaten, swans, geese, and ducks were always plentiful, and the fish
+could not be exhausted.
+
+On a day in February, people from Kaskaskia hurried over the road which
+then stretched a league to the Mississippi, for the town was on the
+Kaskaskia River bank. There were settlers in blanket capotes, shaped
+like friars' frocks, with hoods to draw over their heads. If it had
+been June instead of February, a blue or red kerchief would have covered
+the men's heads. The dress of an ordinary frontiersman in those days
+consisted of shirt, breech-cloth, and buckskin leggins, with moccasins,
+and neips, or strips of blanket wrapped around the feet for stockings.
+The voyageur so equipped could undertake any hardship. But in the
+settlements wooden shoes were worn instead of moccasins, and garments of
+texture lighter than buckskin. The women wore short gowns, or long, full
+jackets, and petticoats; and their moccasins were like those of squaws,
+ornamented with beautiful quill-work. Their outer wraps were not unlike
+the men's; so a multitude of blanket capotes flocked toward the
+Mississippi bank, which at that time had not been washed away, and rose
+steeply above the water. They had all run to see a procession of boats
+pass by from Fort Chartres.
+
+A little negro had brought the news that the boats were in sight. Black
+slaves were owned by some of the French; and Indian slaves, sold by
+their captors to the settlers, had long been members of these
+patriarchal households. Many of them had left their work to follow their
+masters to the river; the negroes pointing and shouting, the Indians
+standing motionless and silent.
+
+The sun flecked a broad expanse of water, and down this shining track
+rushed a fleet of canoes; white uniforms leading, and brick-colored
+heads above dusky-fringed buckskins following close after. This little
+army waved their hands and fired guns to salute the crowd on shore. The
+crowd all jangled voices in excited talk, no man listening to what
+another said.
+
+"See you--there are Monsieur Pierre D'Artaguette and the Chevalier De
+Vincennes and excellent Father Senat in the first boat."
+
+"The young St. Ange and Sieur Lalande follow them."
+
+"How many of our good Indians have thrown themselves into this
+expedition! The Chickasaw nation may howl when they see this array!
+They will be taught to leave the boats from New Orleans alone!"
+
+"But suppose Sieur De Bienville and his army do not meet the Commandant
+D'Artaguette when he reaches the Chickasaw country?"
+
+"During his two years at Fort Chartres has Sieur D'Artaguette made
+mistakes? The expedition will succeed."
+
+"The saints keep that beautiful boy!--for to look at him, though he is
+so hardy, Monsieur Pierre D'Artaguette is as handsome as a woman. I have
+heard the southern tribes sacrifice their own children to the sun. This
+is a fair company of Christians to venture against such devils."
+
+The Chickasaws, occupying a tract of country now stretching across
+northern Mississippi and western Tennessee, were friendly to the English
+and willing to encroach on the French. They interrupted river traffic
+and practiced every cruelty on their prisoners. D'Artaguette knew
+as well as the early explorers that in dealing with savages it is a
+fatal policy to overlook or excuse their ill-behavior. They themselves
+believed in exact revenge, and despised a foe who did not strike back,
+their insolence becoming boundless if not curbed. So he had planned with
+Le Moyne de Bienville a concerted attack on these allies of the English.
+Bienville, bringing troops up river from New Orleans, was to meet him in
+the Chickasaw country on a day and spot carefully specified.
+
+[Illustration: Autograph of Bienville.]
+
+The brilliant pageant of canoes went on down the river, seeming to grow
+smaller, until it dwindled to nothingness in the distance.
+
+But in the course of weeks only a few men came back, sent by the
+Chickasaws, to tell about the fate of their leaders. The troops from
+New Orleans did not keep the appointment, arriving too late and then
+retreating. D'Artaguette, urged by his Indians, made the attack with
+such force as he had, and his brave array was destroyed. He and the
+Chevalier Vincennes, with Laland, Father Senat, and many others, a circle
+of noble human torches, perished at the stake. People lamented aloud in
+Kaskaskia and Cahokia streets, and the white flag of France slipped down
+to half-mast on Fort Chartres.
+
+This victory made the Chickasaw Indians so bold that scarcely a French
+convoy on the river escaped them. There is a story that a young girl
+reached the gate of Fort Chartres, starving and in rags, from wandering
+through swamps and woods. She was the last of a family arrived from
+France, and sought her sister, an officer's wife, in the fort. The
+Chickasaws had killed every other relative; she, escaping alone, was
+ready to die of exposure when she saw the flag through the trees.
+
+But another captain of Fort Chartres, no bolder than young Pierre
+D'Artaguette, but more fortunate, named Neyon de Villiers, twenty years
+afterwards led troops as far east as the present state of Pennsylvania,
+and helped his brother, Coulon de Villiers, continue the struggle
+betwixt French and English by defeating, at Fort Necessity, the English
+commanded by a young Virginia officer named George Washington.
+
+[Illustration: INDIAN GAME OF BALL.
+After Catlin.]
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+THE LAST GREAT INDIAN.
+
+
+The sound of the Indian drum was heard on Detroit River, and humid May
+night air carried it a league or more to the fort. All the Pottawatomies
+and Wyandots were gathered from their own villages on opposite shores
+to the Ottawas on the south bank, facing Isle Cochon. Their women and
+children squatted about huge fires to see the war dance. The river
+strait, so limpidly and transparently blue in daytime, that dipping a
+pailful of it was like dipping a pailful of the sky, scarcely glinted
+betwixt darkened woods.
+
+In the center of an open space, which the camp-fires were built to
+illuminate, a painted post was driven into the ground, and the warriors
+formed a large ring around it. Their moccasined feet kept time to the
+booming of the drums. With a flourish of his hatchet around his head, a
+chief leaped into the ring and began to chase an imaginary foe, chanting
+his own deeds and those of his forefathers. He was a muscular rather
+than a tall Indian, with high, striking features. His dark skin was
+colored by war paint, and he had stripped himself of everything but
+ornaments. Ottawa Indians usually wore brilliant blankets, while
+Wyandots of Sandusky and Detroit paraded in painted shirts, their heads
+crowned with feathers, and their leggins tinkling with little bells.
+The Ojibwas, or Chippewas, of the north carried quivers slung on their
+backs, holding their arrows.
+
+The dancer in the ring was the Ottawa chief, Pontiac, a man at that
+time fifty years old, who had brought eighteen savage nations under his
+dominion, so that they obeyed his slightest word. With majestic sweep of
+the limbs he whirled through the pantomime of capturing and scalping an
+enemy, struck the painted post with his tomahawk, and raised the awful
+war whoop. His young braves stamped and yelled with him. Another leaped
+into the ring, sung his deeds, and struck the painted post, warrior
+after warrior following, until a wild maze of sinewy figures swam and
+shrieked around it. Blazing pine knots stuck in the ground helped to
+show this maddened whirl, the very opposite of the peaceful, floating
+calumet dance. Boy papooses, watching it, yelled also, their black eyes
+kindling with full desire to shed blood.
+
+Perhaps no Indian there, except Pontiac, understood what was beginning
+with the war dance on that May night of the year 1763. He had been
+laying his plans all winter, and sending huge black and purple wampum
+belts of war, and hatchets dipped in red, to rouse every native tribe.
+All the Algonquin stock and the Senecas of the Iroquois were united with
+him. From the small oven-shaped hut on Isle Cochon, where he lived with
+his squaws and children, to Michilimackinac, from Michilimackinac to the
+lower Mississippi, and from the eastern end of Lake Erie down to the
+Ohio, the messengers of this self-made emperor had secretly carried and
+unfolded his plan, which was to rise and attack all the English forts on
+the same day, and then to destroy all the English settlers, sparing no
+white people but the French.
+
+Two years before, an English army had come over to Canada and conquered
+it. That was a deathblow to French settlements in the middle west.
+They dared no longer resist English colonists pushing on them from
+the east. All that chain of forts stretching from Lake Erie down to the
+Ohio--Presqu' Isle, Le Boeuf, Venango, Ligonier--had been given up to
+the English, as well as western posts--Detroit, Fort Miami, Ouatanon on
+the Wabash, and Michilimackinac. The settlements on the Mississippi,
+however, still displayed the white flag of France. So large was the
+dominion in the New World which England now had the right to claim,
+that she was unable to grasp it all at once.
+
+[Illustration: The White Flag of France.]
+
+The Indians did not like the English, who treated them with contempt,
+would not offer them presents, and put them in danger of starvation
+by holding back the guns and ammunition, on which they had learned to
+depend, instead of their bows and arrows. For two years they had borne
+the rapid spread of English settlements on land which they still
+regarded as their own. These intruders were not like the French, who
+cared nothing about claiming land, and were always ready to hunt or
+dance with their red brethren.
+
+All the tribes were, therefore, eager to rise against the English, whom
+they wanted to drive back into the sea. Pontiac himself knew this could
+not be done; but he thought it possible, by striking the English forts
+all at once, to restore the French power and so get the French to help
+him in fighting back their common foe from spreading into the west.
+
+Pontiac was the only Indian who ever seemed to realize all the dangers
+which threatened his race, or to have military skill for organizing
+against them. His work had been secret, and he had taken pains to appear
+very friendly to the garrison of Detroit, who were used to the noise of
+Indian yelling and dancing. This fort was the central point of his
+operations, and he intended to take it next morning by surprise.
+
+Though La Motte Cadillac was the founder of a permanent settlement on
+the west shore of Detroit River, it is said that Greysolon du Lhut set
+up the first palisades there. About a hundred houses stood crowded
+together within the wooden wall of these tall log pickets, which were
+twenty-five feet high. The houses were roofed with bark or thatched with
+straw. The streets were mere paths, but a wide road went all around the
+town next to the palisades. Detroit was almost square in shape, with
+a bastion, or fortified projection, at each corner, and a blockhouse
+built over each gate. The river almost washed the front palisades, and
+two schooners usually anchored near to protect the fort and give it
+communication with other points. Besides the homes of settlers, it
+contained barracks for soldiers, a council-house, and a little church.
+
+About a hundred and twenty English soldiers, besides fur traders and
+Canadian settlers, were in this inclosure, which was called the fort, to
+distinguish it from the village of French houses up and down the shore.
+Dwellers outside had their own gardens and orchards, also surrounded by
+pickets. These French people, who tried to live comfortably among the
+English, whom they liked no better than the Indians did, raised fine
+pears and apples and made wine of the wild grapes.
+
+The river, emptying the water of the upper lakes into Lake Erie, was
+about half a mile wide. Sunlight next morning showed this blue strait
+sparkling from the palisades to the other shore, and trees and gardens
+moist with that dewy breath which seems to exhale from fresh-water seas.
+Indians swarmed early around the fort, pretending that the young men
+were that day going to play a game of ball in the fields, while Pontiac
+and sixty old chiefs came to hold a council with the English. More than
+a thousand of them lounged about, ready for action. The braves were
+blanketed, each carrying a gun with its barrel filed off short enough
+to be concealed under his blanket.
+
+About ten o'clock Pontiac and his chiefs crossed the river in birch
+canoes and stalked in Indian file, every man stepping in the tracks
+of the man before him, to the fort gates. The gates on the water side
+usually stood open until evening, for the English, contemptuously
+careless of savages, let squaws and warriors come and go at pleasure.
+They did not that morning open until Pontiac entered. He found himself
+and his chiefs walking betwixt files of armed soldiers. The gates were
+shut behind him.
+
+Pontiac was startled as if by a sting. He saw that some one had betrayed
+his plan to the officers. Even fur traders were standing under arms.
+To this day it is not known who secretly warned the fort of Pontiac's
+conspiracy; but the most reliable tradition declares it to have been a
+young squaw named Catherine, who could not endure to see friends whom
+she loved put to death.
+
+It flashed through Pontiac's mind that he and his followers were now
+really prisoners. The captain of Detroit was afterwards blamed for not
+holding the chief when he had him. The tribes could not rush through
+the closed gates at Pontiac's signal, which was to be the lifting of a
+wampum belt upside down, with all its figures reversed. But the cunning
+savage put on a look of innocence and inquired:--
+
+"My father," using the Indian term of respect, "why are so many of your
+young men standing in the street with their guns?"
+
+"They have been ordered out for exercise and discipline," answered the
+officer.
+
+A slight clash of arms and the rolling of drums were heard by the
+surprised tribes waiting in suspense around the palisades. They did not
+know whether they would ever see their leader appear again. But he came
+out, after going through the form of a council, mortified by his failure
+to seize the fort, and sulkily crossed the river to his lodge. All his
+plans to bring warriors inside the palisades were treated with contempt
+by the captain of Detroit. Pontiac wanted his braves to smoke the
+calumet with his English father.
+
+"You may come in yourself," said the officer, "but the crowd you have
+with you must remain outside."
+
+"I want all my young men," urged Pontiac, "to enjoy the fragrance of the
+friendly calumet."
+
+"I will have none of your rabble in the fort," said the officer.
+
+Raging like a wild beast, Pontiac then led his people in assault.
+He threw off every pretense of friendliness, and from all directions
+the tribes closed around Detroit in a general attack. Though it had
+wooden walls, it was well defended. The Indians, after their first
+fierce onset, fighting in their own way, behind trees and sheltered by
+buildings outside the fort, were able to besiege the place indefinitely
+with comparatively small loss to themselves; while the garrison, shut
+in almost without warning, looked forward to scarcity of provisions.
+
+All English people caught beyond the walls were instantly murdered. But
+the French settlers were allowed to go about their usual affairs unhurt.
+Queer traditions have come down from them of the pious burial they gave
+to English victims of the Indians. One old man stuck his hands out of
+his grave. The French covered them with earth. But next time they passed
+that way they saw the stiff, entreating hands, like pale fungi, again
+thrust into view. At this the horrified French settlers hurried to their
+priest, who said the neglected burial service over the grave, and so put
+the poor Englishman to rest, for his hands protruded no more.
+
+One of the absent schooners kept for the use of the fort had gone down
+river with letters and dispatches. Her crew knew nothing of the siege,
+and she narrowly escaped capture. A convoy of boats, bringing the usual
+spring supplies, was taken, leaving Detroit to face famine. Yet it
+refused to surrender, and, in spite of Pontiac's rage and his continual
+investment of the place, the red flag of England floated over that
+fortress all summer.
+
+Other posts were not so fortunate in resisting Pontiac's conspiracy.
+Fort Sandusky, at the west end of Lake Erie; Fort Ouatanon, on the
+Wabash, a little south of where Lafayette, in the state of Indiana, now
+stands; Fort Miami, Presqu' Isle, Le Boeuf, Venango, on the eastern
+border, and Michilimackinac, on the straits, were all taken by the
+Indians.
+
+At Presqu' Isle the twenty-seven soldiers went into the blockhouse of
+the fort and prepared to hold it, lining and making it bullet-proof.
+
+A blockhouse was built of logs, or very thick timber, and had no
+windows, and but one door in the lower story. The upper story projected
+several feet all around, and had loopholes in the overhanging, floor,
+through which the men could shoot down. Loopholes were also fixed in the
+upper walls, wide within, but closing to narrow slits on the outside.
+A sentry box or lookout was sometimes put at the top of the roof. With
+the door barred by iron or great beams of wood, and food and ammunition
+stored in the lower room, men could ascend a ladder to the second story
+of a blockhouse and hold it against great odds, if the besiegers did not
+succeed in burning them out.
+
+Presqu' Isle was at the edge of Lake Erie, and the soldiers brought
+in all the water they could store. But the attacking Indians made
+breastworks of logs, and shot burning arrows on the shingle roof.
+All the water barrels were emptied putting out fires. While some men
+defended the loopholes, others dug under the floor of the blockhouse and
+mined a way below ground to the well in the fort where Indians swarmed.
+Buildings in the inclosure were set on fire, but the defenders of the
+blockhouse kept it from catching the flames by tearing off shingles
+from the roof when they began to burn. The mining party reached the well,
+and buckets of water were drawn up and passed through the tunnel to the
+blockhouse. Greatly exhausted, the soldiers held out until next day,
+when, having surrendered honorably, they were all taken prisoners as
+they left the scorched and battered log tower. For savages were such
+capricious and cruel victors that they could rarely be depended upon to
+keep faith. Pontiac himself was superior to his people in such matters.
+If he had been at Presqu' Isle, the garrison would not have been seized
+after surrendering on honorable terms. However, these soldiers were not
+instantly massacred, as other prisoners had been in war betwixt French
+and English, when savage allies could not be restrained.
+
+Next to Detroit the most important post was Michilimackinac.
+
+This was not the island in the straits bearing that name, but a
+stockaded fort on the south shore of Michigan, directly across the
+strait from St. Ignace. To this day, searching along a beach of deep,
+yielding sand, so different from the rocky strands of the islands,
+you may find at the forest edge a cellar where the powder house stood,
+and fruit trees and gooseberry bushes from gardens planted there more
+than two hundred years ago.
+
+Michilimackinac, succeeding St. Ignace, had grown in importance, and was
+now a stockaded fort, having French houses both within and outside it,
+like Detroit. After Father Marquette's old mission had been abandoned
+and the buildings burned, another small mission was begun at L'Arbre
+Croche, not far west of Fort Michilimackinac, such of his Ottawas as
+were not scattered being gathered here. The region around also was full
+of Chippewas or Ojibwas.
+
+All these Indians hated the English. Some came to the fort and said to a
+young English trader named Alexander Henry, who arrived after the white
+flag was hauled down and the red one about to be hoisted:--
+
+"Englishman, although you have conquered the French, you have not
+conquered us. We are not your slaves. These lakes, these woods and
+mountains were left to us by our ancestors. They are our inheritance,
+and we will part with them to none!"
+
+Though these Ottawas and Chippewas were independent of those about
+Detroit, they had eagerly taken hold of Pontiac's war belt. The
+missionary priest was able for a while to restrain the Ottawas. The
+Chippewas, gathered in from their winter's hunting, determined to strike
+the first blow.
+
+On the fourth day of June, which was the English king's birthday, they
+came and invited the garrison to look at a game of ball, or baggattaway,
+which they were going to play on the long sandy beach, against some
+Sac Indians. The fortress gates stood open. The day was very warm and
+discipline was relaxed. Nobody noticed that squaws, flocking inside the
+fort, had tomahawks and scalping knives hidden under their blankets,
+though a few Englishmen afterward remembered that the squaws were
+strangely huddled in wrappings on a day hot for that climate.
+
+The young English trader, Alexander Henry, has left a careful account of
+the massacre at Fort Michilimackinac. He did not go out to see the ball
+game, because he had important letters to write and send by a canoe just
+starting to Canada. Officers and men, believing the red tribes friendly,
+lounged about unarmed. Whitewashed French houses shone in the sun, and
+the surge of the straits sounded peacefully on the beach. Nobody could
+dream that when the shouting Indians drove the ball back from the
+farthest stake, their cries would suddenly change to war whoops.
+
+At that horrid yell Henry sprang up and ran to a window of his house.
+He saw Chippewas filling the fort, and with weapons snatched from the
+squaws, cutting down and scalping Englishmen. He caught his own gun from
+its rack, expecting to hear the drum beat to arms. But the surprised
+garrison were unable even to sound an alarm.
+
+Seeing that not a Frenchman was touched, Henry slipped into the house of
+his next neighbor, a Canadian named Langlade. The whole family were at
+the front windows, looking at the horrible sights in the fort; but an
+Indian slave, a Pani, or Pawnee woman, beckoned to him and hid him in
+the attic, locking the door and carrying away the key.
+
+The attic probably had one or two of those tunnel-like dormer windows
+built in the curving roof of all French houses. Henry found a place
+where he could look out. He saw his countrymen slaughtered without being
+able to help them, and it was like a frightful nightmare from which
+there was to be no awakening. Presently the cry rose:--
+
+"All is finished!"
+
+Then the Indians crowded into Langlade's house and inquired whether any
+Englishmen were hid there. So thin was the attic floor of planks laid
+across joists, that Henry could hear every word.
+
+"I cannot say," answered the Frenchman. "You may examine for
+yourselves."
+
+Henry looked around the attic for some place to hide in. Moccasined feet
+were already coming upstairs. Savage hands shook the attic door, and
+impatient guttural voices demanded the key. While some one went for the
+key, Henry crept into a kind of tunnel made by a heap of birch-bark
+vessels, used in the maple-sugar season. The door was opening before he
+could draw himself quite out of sight, and though the pile was in a dark
+corner, he dreaded displacing some of the birch troughs and making a
+noise.
+
+The Indians trod so close to him he thought they must hear him breathe.
+Their bodies were smeared with blood, which could be seen through the
+dusk; and while searching they told Monsieur Langlade how many
+Englishmen they had killed and the number of scalps they had taken.
+
+Not finding any one, they went away and the door was again locked.
+Henry crept out of hiding. There was a feather bed on the floor and he
+stretched himself on it, so worn out by what he had seen and endured
+that he fell asleep.
+
+He was roused by the door opening again. Madame Langlade came in, and
+she was surprised and frightened at finding him. It was nearly night and
+a fierce summer rain beat upon the roof, dripping through cracks of the
+heat-dried bark. Madame Langlade had come to stop a leak. She told Henry
+that all the English except himself were killed, but she hoped he would
+escape. She brought him some water to drink.
+
+As darkness came on, he lay thinking of his desperate state. He was four
+hundred miles from Detroit, which he did not then know was besieged,
+and with all his stores captured or destroyed by the Indians, he had no
+provisions. He could not stay where he was, and if he ventured out, the
+first red man who met him would kill him.
+
+By morning the Indians came to the house inquiring for Henry, whom they
+had missed. Madame Langlade was in such fear that they might kill her
+children if they found Henry sheltered in the house, that she told her
+husband where he was and begged to have him given up. This the Frenchman
+at first refused to do; but he finally led the Indians again to the
+attic.
+
+Henry stood up, expecting to die.
+
+The Indians were all partially drunk and had satisfied themselves with
+slaughter. One of them seized Henry by the collar and lifted a knife to
+plunge into his breast. White man and red man looked intently at each
+other, and the savage, perhaps moved by the fearless despair in the
+young Englishman's eyes, concluded to take him prisoner. Henry began
+to think he could not be killed.
+
+He found that the captain and lieutenant of Michilimackinac were also
+alive and prisoners like himself. The missionary priest was doing all
+he could to restrain his maddened flock. At a council held between
+Chippewas and Ottawas, Henry was bought with presents by a Chippewa
+chief named Wawatam, who loved him, and who had been absent the day of
+the attack Wawatam put Henry in his canoe, carried him across the strait
+to Michilimackinac Island, and hid him in a cave, which is now called
+Skull Rock by the islanders, because Henry found ancient skulls and bones
+in the bottom of it. As the island was held sacred by the Indians, this
+was probably one of their old sepulchres. Its dome top is smothered in a
+tangle of evergreens and brush. There is a low, triangular entrance, and
+the hollow inside is shaped like an elbow. More than one island boy has
+since crept back to the dark bend where Henry lay hidden on the skulls,
+but only a drift of damp leaves can be found there now.
+
+The whole story of Alexander Henry's adventures, before he escaped and
+returned safely to Canada, is a wonderful chapter in western history.
+
+The Indians were not guilty of all the cruelties practiced in this war.
+Bounties were offered for savage scalps. One renegade Englishman, named
+David Owen, came back from adoption and marriage into a tribe, bringing
+the scalps of his squaw wife and her friends.
+
+Through the entire summer Pontiac was successful in everything except
+the taking of Detroit. He besieged it from May until October. With
+autumn his hopes began to dwindle. He had asked the French to help him,
+and refused to believe that their king had made a treaty at Paris,
+giving up to the English all French claims in the New World east of
+the Mississippi. His cause was lost. He could band unstable warriors
+together for a common good, but he could not control politics in Europe,
+nor defend a people given up by their sovereign, against the solidly
+advancing English race.
+
+[Illustration: North America at Close of French Wars, 1763.]
+
+But he was unwilling to own himself defeated while the French flag waved
+over a foot of American ground. This clever Indian, needing supplies to
+carry on his war, used civilized methods to get them on credit. He gave
+promissory notes written on birch bark, signed with his own totem, or
+tribe-mark--a picture of the otter. These notes were faithfully paid.
+
+When he saw his struggle becoming hopeless eastward, he drew off to the
+Illinois settlements to fight back the English from taking possession of
+Fort Chartres, the last French post. They might come up the Mississippi
+from New Orleans, or they might come down the Ohio. The Iroquois had
+always called the Mississippi the Ohio, considering that river which
+rose near their own country the great river, and the northern branch
+merely a tributary.
+
+Pontiac ordered the Illinois Indians to take up arms and stand by him.
+
+"Hesitate not," he said, "or I will destroy you as fire does the prairie
+grass! These are the words of Pontiac."
+
+They obeyed him. He sent more messengers down as far as New Orleans,
+keeping the tribes stirred against the English. He camped with his
+forces around Fort Chartres, cherishing it and urging the last French
+commandant, St. Ange de Bellerive, to take up arms with him, until that
+poor captain, tormented by the savage mob, and only holding the place
+until its English owners received it, was ready to march out with his
+few soldiers and abandon it.
+
+It is told that while Pontiac was leading his forlorn hope, he made his
+conquerors ridiculous. Major Loftus with a detachment of troops came up
+the Mississippi to take possession according to treaty. Pontiac turned
+him back. Captain Pittman came up the river. Pontiac turned him back.
+Captain Morris started from Detroit, and Pontiac squatted defiantly in
+his way. Lieutenant Frazer descended the Ohio. Pontiac caught him and
+shipped him to New Orleans by canoe. Captain Croghan was also stopped
+near Detroit. Both French and Spanish people roared with laughter at
+the many failures of the coming race to seize what had so easily been
+obtained by treaty.
+
+Two years and a half passed between Pontiac's attack on Detroit and
+the formal surrender of Fort Chartres. The great war chief's heart, with
+a gradual breaking, finally yielded before the steadily advancing and
+all-conquering people that were to dominate this continent.
+
+The second day of winter, late in the afternoon, Pontiac went into
+the fort unattended by any warrior, and without a word sat down near
+St. Ange de Bellerive in the officers' quarters. Both veteran soldier
+and old chief knew that Major Farmar, with a large body of troops,
+was almost in sight of Fort Chartres, coming from New Orleans. Perhaps
+before the low winter sun was out of sight, cannon mounted on one of
+the bastions would have to salute the new commandant. Sentinels on
+the mound of Fort Chartres could see a frosty valley, reaching to the
+Mississippi, glinting in the distance. That alluvial stretch was, in
+the course of years, to be eaten away by the river even to the bastions.
+The fort itself, built at such expense, would soon be abandoned by
+its conquerors, to sink, piecemeal, a noble and massive ruin. The
+dome-shaped powder house and stone quarters would be put to ignoble
+uses, and forest trees, spreading the spice of walnut fragrance, or the
+dense shadow of oaks, would grow through the very room where St. Ange
+and Pontiac sat. Indians, passing by, would camp in the old place,
+forgetting how the last hope of their race had clung to it.
+
+The Frenchman partly foresaw these changes, and it was a bitter hour to
+him. He wanted to have it over and to cross the Mississippi, to a town
+recently founded northward on the west shore, where many French settlers
+had collected, called St. Louis. This was then considered Spanish
+ground. But if the French king deserted his American colonies, why
+should not his American colonists desert him?
+
+"Father," spoke out Pontiac, with the usual Indian term of respect,
+"I have always loved the French. We have often smoked the calumet
+together, and we have fought battles together against misguided Indians
+and the English dogs."
+
+St. Ange de Bellerive looked at the dejected chief and thought of Le
+Moyne de Bienville, now an old man living in France, who was said to
+have wept and implored King Louis on his knees not to give up to the
+English that rich western domain which Marquette and Jolliet and La
+Salle and Tonty and many another Frenchman had suffered to gain, and
+to secure which he himself had given his best years.
+
+"The chief must now bury the hatchet," he answered quietly.
+
+"I have buried it," said Pontiac. "I shall lift it no more."
+
+"The English are willing to make peace with him, if he recalls all his
+wampum belts of war."
+
+Pontiac grinned. "The belts are more than one man can carry."
+
+"Where does the chief intend to go when he leaves this post?"
+
+Pontiac lifted his hand and pointed east, west, north, south.
+He would have no settled abode. It was a sign that he relinquished the
+inheritance of his fathers to an invader he hated. His race could not
+live under the civilization of the Anglo-Saxon. He would have struck
+out to the remotest wilderness, had he foreseen to what a burial place
+his continual clinging to the French would bring him. For Pontiac was
+assassinated by an Illinois Indian, whom an English trader had bribed,
+and his body lies somewhere to-day under the pavements of St. Louis,
+English-speaking men treading constantly over him. But if the dead
+chief's ears could hear, he would catch also the sound of the beloved
+French tongue lingering there.
+
+A cannon thundered from one of the bastions. St. Ange stood up, and
+Pontiac stood up with him.
+
+"The English are in sight," said St. Ange de Bellerive. "That salute is
+the signal for the flag of France to be lowered on Fort Chartres."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+ANNOUNCEMENTS
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN HISTORY
+
+EUROPEAN BEGINNINGS
+
+By Alice M. Atkinson
+
+12mo, cloth, xvi + 303 Pages, illustrated, 75 cents.
+
+
+This volume has been prepared to meet the need of the sixth grade
+of the grammar school for a short and simple introduction to the
+history of the United States to accord with the recommendations of the
+Committee of Eight of the American Historical Association. In a clear,
+straightforward story full of interest for young readers it tells about
+some of the events that make up the history of Europe from the days of
+Greece and Rome to the colonization of America. The wealth of pertinent
+illustrations adds to the interest and value of the book, and the open,
+attractive type page makes easy reading. Teachers will find the material
+well arranged for class purposes, each section being of suitable length
+for one lesson and fully provided with helps in the way of suggestive
+questions and references for further reading in class.
+
+The purpose throughout has been to tell vividly, simply, and fully about
+a few great persons and events; to maintain strict historical accuracy;
+and to bring the past into relation with the present at as many points
+as possible. Primitive man, Rome and Greece, the Northmen, the Church,
+the Crusades, medieval life in town and country, and discoveries and
+inventions are among the subjects treated. The narrative ends with the
+death of Queen Elizabeth and the movement toward the colonization of
+America.
+
+English history, wherever possible, forms the basis of the story, giving
+the clearness and simplicity of treatment necessary in a history for the
+grammar grades. Altogether, this book in a new field is admirably
+adapted to successful use in American schools.
+
+GINN AND COMPANY Publishers
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+BLAISDELL'S
+
+BOOKS ON HISTORY
+
+By ALBERT F. BLAISDELL
+
+
+STORIES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY
+
+12mo, cloth, 191 pages, illustrated, 40 cents.
+
+Forty of the most interesting events in English history, from the
+earliest times to the present day, form the subjects of these chapters,
+which have been carefully edited and rewritten from standard writers for
+the use of pupils in grades five to eight.
+
+
+THE STORY OF AMERICAN HISTORY
+
+12mo, cloth, 440 pages, illustrated, 60 cents.
+
+The story of our country is here told in twenty-six short chapters.
+Each one connects some leading event with an important historical
+character. Picturesque accounts are given of dramatic events, manners
+of olden times, and exceptional deeds of valor. The book provides
+suitable reading for pupils in the middle grades of the grammar school.
+
+
+HERO STORIES FROM AMERICAN HISTORY
+
+By Albert F. Blaisdell and Francis K. Ball, formerly Instructor in
+The Browne, and Nichols School, Cambridge, Mass. 12mo, cloth, 259
+pages, illustrated, 50 cents.
+
+This book may be used either as a supplementary reader in American
+history for the fifth and sixth grades in elementary schools or for
+collateral reading in connection with a formal textbook of a somewhat
+higher grade.
+
+
+SHORT STORIES FROM AMERICAN HISTORY
+
+By Albert F. Blaisdell and Francis K. Ball, formerly Instructor in
+The Browne and Nichols School, Cambridge, Mass. 12mo, cloth, 146
+pages, illustrated, 40 cents.
+
+This collection of interesting stories is designed for supplementary
+reading in the fourth and fifth grades of elementary schools. It
+contains eighteen vivid narratives of dramatic events which took place
+during the first two hundred years in the history of our country. Each
+story will appeal to the young reader because of its human interest and
+because of its presentation of the picturesque life of our forefathers.
+
+
+GINN AND COMPANY Publishers
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY THROUGH THE APPALACHIANS
+
+By ALBERT PERRY BRIGHAM
+
+Professor of Geology in Colgate University, Hamilton, N.Y.
+
+12mo, cloth, 188 pages, with maps and illustrations, 50 cents.
+
+
+This volume is designed to aid the study of American history and
+geography in the upper grades of grammar and first year of high schools.
+It gives the story of the great roads across the Appalachians, telling
+where they are, why they run as they do, and what their history has
+been. The evolution from Indian trails to modern rapid transit is
+studied in the Berkshires, along the Hudson and Mohawk, across the
+uplands from Philadelphia and Baltimore, and through the Great Valley
+to Tennessee and Kentucky.
+
+The book shows how the waves of migration swept through the passes from
+the seaboard to the country west of the mountains, and the essential
+physiographic features of the eastern United States are worked in as
+a part of the narrative.
+
+
+    William M. Davis, _Professor of Geology_, _Harvard University,
+    Cambridge, Mass._: Brigham's From Trail to Railway is a serviceable
+    example of a class of books that I hope to see increase in number.
+
+    Amos W. Farnham, _State Normal School_, _Oswego, N.Y._: From Trail
+    to Railway is written in Professor Brigham's clear and strong way
+    of saying things, and any one who knows the man can feel him as he
+    reads if he cannot see him. The style is well suited to the grades
+    for which the book is written, and the story of pioneer life is
+    one to engage the interest of history and geography pupils alike.
+
+
+GINN AND COMPANY Publishers
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+READING BOOKS ON AMERICAN HISTORY
+
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+  Blaisdell: Story of American History                  $0.60
+
+  Blaisdell and Ball: Hero Stories from American History  .50
+
+  Blaisdell and Ball: Short Stories from American History .40
+
+  Brigham: Geographic Influences in American History     1.25
+
+  Catherwood: Heroes of the Middle West                   .50
+
+  Collins: History of Vermont                             .80
+
+  Davis: Under Six Flags. The Story of Texas              .50
+
+  Faris: Real Stories from Our History                    .60
+
+  Fassett: Colonial Life in New Hampshire                 .60
+
+  Fiske: How the United States became a Nation            .50
+
+  Fiske-Irving: Washington and his Country                .60
+
+  Franklin: Autobiography                                 .40
+
+  Gayley and Flaherty: Poetry of the People               .50
+
+  Hitchcock: The Louisiana Purchase                       .60
+
+  Lane and Hill: American History in Literature           .50
+
+  Lawler: Columbus and Magellan                           .40
+
+  Montgomery: Heroic Ballads                              .50
+
+  Moore-Tiffany: From Colony to Commonwealth              .60
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+  Pilgrims and Puritans                                   .60
+
+  Williams: Some Successful Americans                     .50
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+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Heroes of the Middle West, by
+Mary Hartwell Catherwood
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