[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 Athenæum Press GINN AND COMPANY · PROPRIETORS · BOSTON · U. S. A. 

PREFACE. 

Let any one who thinks it an easy task attempt to cover the Frenchdiscovery and occupation of the middle west, from Marquette and Jollietto 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 themodern aspect of things and demanding a light, sure touch. Let himgather 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 andremoulding its forms. He will find the task he so lightly set himselfa terribly hard and exhausting one, and will appreciate as he neverbefore 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 priestof St. Ignace, on what is now called the north shore of Michigan, andLouis Jolliet, a trader from Montreal, set out on a journey together. 

Huron and Ottawa Indians, with the priest left in charge of them, stoodon the beach to see Marquette embark, --the water running up to theirfeet and receding with the everlasting wash of the straits. Behind themthe shore line of St. Ignace was bent like a long bow. Northward, beyondthe end of the bow, a rock rose in the air as tall as a castle. But veryhumble was the small mission station which Father Marquette had foundedwhen driven with his flock from his post on the Upper Lakes by theIroquois. A chapel of strong cedar posts covered with bark, his ownhut, and the lodges of his people were all surrounded by pointedpalisades. Opposite St. Ignace, across a league or so of water, rosethe turtle-shaped back of Michilimackinac Island, venerated by thetribes, in spite of their religious teaching, as a home of mysteriousgiant fairies who made gurgling noises in the rocks along the beach orfloated vast and cloud-like through high pine forests. The evergreenson Michilimackinac showed as if newborn through the haze of undefineddeciduous trees, for it was May weather, which means that the northernworld had not yet leaped into sudden and glorious summer. Though thestraits glittered under a cloudless sky, a chill lingered in the wind, and only the basking stone ledges reflected warmth. The clear elasticair was such a perfect medium of sight that it allowed the eye todistinguish open beach rims from massed forests two or three leaguesaway on the south shore, and seemed to bring within stone's throw thosenearer islands now called Round and Bois Blanc. 

It must have wrung Marquette's heart to leave this region, which hasan irresistible charm for all who come within its horizon. But he hadlong desired to undertake this journey for a double purpose. He wantedto carry his religion as far as possible among strange tribes, and hewanted to find and explore that great river of the west, about whichadventurers 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 takenpossession of by the Spaniards, its first discoverers. But they made nouse of their discovery, and on their maps traced it as an insignificantstream. The French did not know whether this river flowed into the Gulfof California--which was called the Red Sea--or to the western ocean, or through Virginia eastward. Illinois Indians, visiting Marquette'smission after the manner of roving tribes, described the father ofwaters and its tributaries. Count Frontenac, the governor of Canada, thought the matter of sufficient importance to send Louis Jolliet withan outfit to join the missionary in searching for the stream. 

The explorers took with them a party of five men. Their canoes, we aretold, were of birch bark and cedar splints, the ribs being shaped fromspruce roots. Covered with the pitch of yellow pine, and light enoughto be carried on the shoulders of four men across portages, these canoesyet had toughness equal to any river voyage. They were provisioned withsmoked meat and Indian corn. Shoved clear of the beach, they shot outon the blue water to the dip of paddles. Marquette waved his adieu. His Indians, remembering the dangers of that southern country, scarcelyhoped to see him again. Marquette, though a young man, was of no suchsturdy build as Jolliet. Among descendants of the Ottawas you may stillhear the tradition that he had a "white face, and long hair the colorof the sun" flowing to the shoulders of his black robe. 

The watching figures dwindled, as did the palisaded settlement. Huggingthe shore, the canoes entered Lake Michigan, or, as it was then called, the Lake of the Illinois. All the islands behind seemed to meet andintermingle and to cover themselves with blue haze as they went downon the water. Priest and trader, their skins moist with the breathof the lake, each in his own canoe, faced silently the unknown worldtoward which they were venturing. The shaggy coast line bristled withevergreens, and though rocky, it was low, unlike the white cliffs ofMichilimackinac. 

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 sixIndian languages, and readily adapted himself to any dialect. Marquette, the records tell us, came of "an old and honorable family of Laon, " innorthern France. Century after century the Marquettes bore high honorsin Laon, and their armorial bearings commemorated devotion to theking in distress. In our own Revolutionary War it is said that threeMarquettes fought for us with La Fayette. No young man of his time hada 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'sRiver, betwixt Lake Huron and Lake Superior, have a tradition thatFather Marquette and Father Dablon built their missionary station ona tiny island of rocks, not more than two canoe lengths from shore, onthe American side. But men who have written books declare it was on thebank below the rapids. 

[Illustration: Autograph of Jolliet. ]

Jolliet had come of different though not less worthy stock. He wasCanadian born, the son of a wagon-maker in Quebec; and he had been welleducated, and possessed an active, adventurous mind. He was dressed forthis expedition in the tough buckskin hunting suit which frontiersmenthen wore. But Marquette retained the long black cassock of the priest. Their five voyageurs--or trained woodsmen--in more or less stainedbuckskin and caps of fur, sent the canoes shooting over the water withscarcely a sound, dipping a paddle now on this side and now on that, Indian fashion; Marquette and Jolliet taking turns with them as theday progressed. For any man, whether voyageur, priest, or seignior, who did not know how to paddle a canoe, if occasion demanded, was atsore disadvantage in the New World. 

The first day of any journey, before one meets weariness or anxiety anddisappointment, remains always the freshest in memory. When the sun wentdown, leaving violet shadows on the chill lake, they drew their boatson shore; and Pierre Porteret and another Frenchman, named Jacques, gathered driftwood to make a fire, while the rest of the crew unpackedthe cargo. They turned each canoe on its side, propping the ends withsticks driven into the ground, thus making canopies like half-roofs toshelter 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 tinderwith 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 nowat me; I know the Indian way to start a blaze by taking two pieces ofwood 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 anotherhungry man, coming with a kettle of lake water. But the fire soonclimbed pinkly through surrounding darkness. They drove down two forkedsupports to hold a crosspiece, and hung the kettle to boil their hulledcorn. Then the fish which had been taken by trolling during the day weredressed and broiled on hot coals. 

The May starlight was very keen over their heads in a dark blue skywhich seemed to rise to infinite heights, for the cold northern nightair swept it of every film. Their first delicious meal was blessed andeaten; and stretched in blankets, with their feet to the camp fire, thetired explorers rested. They were still on the north shore of what wenow call the state of Michigan, and their course had been due westwardby the compass. A cloud of Indian tobacco smoke rose from the lowly roofof each canoe, and its odor mingled with the sweet acrid breath ofburning wood. Jolliet and the voyageurs had learned to use this driedbrown weed, which all tribes held in great esteem and carried about withthem in their rovings. 

"If true tales be told of the water around the Bay of the Puans, " one ofthe voyageurs was heard to say as he stretched himself under the canoeallotted to the men, "we may save our salt when we pass that country. "

"Have you ever heard, Father, " Jolliet inquired of the missionary, "thatthe 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 insteadwith the sugar they make from the maple tree. Therefore, the bay intowhich we are soon to venture they call the Bay of the Fetid, orill-smelling salty country, on account of saline water thereabout. "

"Then why do the Winnebago tribe on this bay allow themselves to becalled 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 tallof stature. I find Wild Oats a stranger name--the Menomonies are WildOats Indians. Since the gospel has been preached to all these tribes forsome 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 calledFox, up which we must paddle, is as hard as the way to heaven, speciallythe rapids. But when you arrive there it is a natural paradise. "

"We have tremendous labor before us, " mused Jolliet. "Father, did youever 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 arenegade among savages, and returned to the settlements only to die. "

"Heaven save this expedition from becoming renegade among savages byforgetting its highest object!" breathed Marquette. 

His companion smiled toward the pleasant fire-light. Jolliet had oncethought of becoming a priest himself. He venerated this young apostle, only half a dozen years his senior. But he was glad to be a freeadventurer, seeking wealth and honor; not foreseeing that though thegreat island of Anticosti in the Gulf of St. Lawrence would be givenhim for his services, he would die a poor and neglected man. 

When, after days of steady progress, the expedition entered the Bayof Puans, now called Green Bay, and found the nation of Menomonies orWild Oats Indians, Marquette was as much interested as Jolliet in thegrain which gave these people their bread. It grew like rice, in marshyplaces, on knotted stalks which appeared above the water in June androse several feet higher. The grain seed was long and slender andmade plentiful meal. The Indians gathered this volunteer harvest inSeptember, when the kernels were so ripe that they dropped readily intocanoes pushed among the stalks. They were then spread out on latticework and smoked to dry the chaff, which could be trodden loose when thewhole bulk, tied in a skin bag, was put into a hollow in the ground madefor that purpose. The Indians pounded their grain to meal and cooked itwith fat. 

The Menomonies tried to prevent Marquette and Jolliet from goingfarther. They said the great river was dangerous, full of frightfulmonsters that swallowed both men and canoes; that there was a roaringdemon in it who could be heard for leagues; and the heat was so intensein those southern countries through which it flowed, that if theFrenchmen escaped all other dangers, they must die of that. Marquettetold them his own life was nothing compared to the good word he wantedto carry to those southern tribes, and he laughed at the demon andinstructed them in his own religion. 

The aboriginal tribes, by common instinct, tried from the first to keepthe white man out of countries which he was determined to overrun andpossess, regardless of danger. 

At the end of a voyage of thirty leagues, or about ninety miles, theexplorers reached the head of the Bay of Puans, and a region thicklysettled with Winnebagoes and Pottawotomies between the bay and WinnebagoLake, Sacs on Fox River, and Mascoutins, Kickapoos, and Miamis. FoxRiver, which they followed from the head of the bay, and of which thelake seemed only an expansion, was a rocky stream. A later traveler hastold us that Fox River in its further extent is very crooked, and whileseeming wide, with a boundary of hills on each hand, it affords but aslender channel in a marsh full of rushes and wild oats. 

The Kickapoos and Mascoutins were rude, coarse-featured Indians. Thoughthe missionary exhorted them as seriously as he did their gentlerneighbors, he could not help remarking to Jolliet that "the Miamis werebetter made, and the two long earlocks which they wore gave them a goodappearance. "

It was the seventh day of June when the explorers arrived in thiscountry of cabins woven of rushes; and they did not linger here. Frenchmen had never gone farther. They were to enter new lands untroddenby the white race. They were in what is now called the state ofWisconsin, where "the soil was good, " they noted, "producing much corn;and the Indians gathered also quantities of plums and grapes. " In thesewarmer lands the season progressed rapidly. 

Marquette and Jolliet called the chiefs together and told them thatJolliet was sent by the governor to find new countries, and Marquettehad been commissioned of Heaven to preach. Making the chiefs a present, without which they would not have received the talk seriously, theexplorers asked for guides to that tributary which was said to run intothe great river. 

The chiefs responded with the gift of a rush mat for Marquette andJolliet to rest on during their journey, and sent two young Miamis withthem. If these kindly Indians disliked to set the expedition further onits way, they said nothing but very polite things about the hardihoodof Frenchmen, who could venture with only two canoes, and seven in theirparty, on unknown worlds. 

The young Miamis, in a boat of their own, led out the procession thetenth morning of June. Taking up paddles, the voyageurs looked backat an assembled multitude--perhaps the last kindly natives on theirperilous way--and at the knoll in the midst of prairies where hospitablerush houses stood and would stand until the inmates took them down androlled them up to carry to hunting grounds, and at groves dotting thosepleasant prairies where guests were abundantly fed. 

Three leagues up the marshy and oats-choked Fox River, constantlywidening to little lakes and receding to a throat of a channel, broughtthe explorers to the portage, or carrying place. The canoes then hadto be unloaded, and both cargo and boats carried overland to a bend ofthe Miscousing, which was the Indian name for Wisconsin River. "Thisportage, " says a traveler who afterwards followed that way, "is half aleague in length, and half of that is a kind of marsh full of mud. " Inwet seasons the head of Fox River at that time seemed not unlikely tofind the Wisconsin, for Marquette has set it down in his recital thatthe portage was only twenty-seven hundred paces. 

When the two Miamis had helped to carry the goods and had set the Frenchon the tributary of the great river, they turned back to their owncountry. Before the men entered the boats Marquette knelt down withthem on the bank and prayed for the success of the undertaking. It wasa lovely broad river on which they now embarked, with shining sandsshowing through the clear water, making shallows like tumbling discsof brilliant metal, --a river in which the canoes might sometimes runaground, but one that deceived the eye pleasantly, with islands all vinecovered, so when a boat clove a way between two it was a guess how farthe Wisconsin spread away on each side to shores of a fertile land. Oaks, walnuts, whitewood, and thorn trees crowded the banks or fellapart, showing prairies rolling to wooded hills. Deer were surprised, stretching their delicate necks down to drink at the margin. They lookedup 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 setin defense. 

"Sieur Jolliet, " said the missionary, once when the canoes drewtogether, "we have now left the waters which flow into the great lakesand 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 branchof the great river. I am becoming convinced, Father, that the greatriver cannot discharge itself toward the east, as some have supposed. "

The explorers estimated the distance from the country of the Mascoutinsto the portage to be three leagues, and from the portage to the mouthof the Miscousing forty leagues. This distance they covered in a week. Drawing their canoes to the shore at night, they pitched camp, varyingthe monotony of their stores with fish and game. Perhaps they hadlearned that wild grapes then budding were not really fit to eat untiltouched by frost. Pierre Porteret said in Marquette's hearing, "theIndians 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 leftSt. Ignace mission, the explorers paddled into a gentle clear river, larger than the Miscousing but not yet monstrous in width, which ransouthward. High hills guarded the right-hand shore, and the left spreadaway in fair meadows. Its current was broken with many little islands, like the Miscousing, though on sounding, Jolliet found the water tobe ten fathoms, or sixty feet, deep. The shores receding, and thendrawing in, gave unequal and irregular width to the stream. But it wasunmistakably the great river they had sought, named then as now by theIndians, 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 wanderingsamong northwestern tribes: the great artery of the middle continent, or, as that party of explorers believed, of the entire west. Receiving intoitself tributaries, it rolled, draining a mighty basin, to unknown seas. 

The first white men ventured forth upon its upper channel in two birchcanoes. Five hardy voices raised a shout which was thrown back in anecho from the hills; five caps were whirled as high as paddles couldraise them. But Marquette said, "This is such joy as we cannot express!"The men in both canoes silenced themselves while he gave thanks for thediscovery. 

[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 notedfirst of all its solitude. Wigwam smoke could not be seen on eithershore. Silence, save the breathing of the river as it rolled on itscourse, seemed to surround and threaten them with ambush. Still, dayafter day, the sweet and awful presence of the wilderness was their onlycompany. Once Pierre Porteret dropped his paddle with a yell which wastossed about by echoing islands. A thing with a tiger's forehead and awildcat's whiskered snout, holding ears and entire gray and black headabove the water, swam for the boat. But it dived and disappeared; andthe 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 hugesluggish catfish. They also caught plenty of sturgeon or shovel fishwhen they cast in their nets. 

The river descended from its hilly cradle to a country of leveldistances. The explorers, seeing nothing of men, gave more attention tobirds and animals. Wild turkeys with burnished necks and breasts temptedthe hunters. The stag uttered far off his whistling call of defiance toother stags. And they began to see a shaggy ox, humped, with an enormoushead and short black horns, and a mane hanging over low-set wicked eyes. Its body was covered with curly rough hair. They learned afterwards fromIndians to call these savage cattle pisikious, or buffaloes. Herds ofmany hundreds grazed together, or, startled, galloped away, like thunderrolling 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 andanchored, sleeping in their canoes. Every night a sentinel was set toguard against surprise. By the 25th of June they had passed throughsixty leagues of solitude. The whole American continent was thinlysettled by native tribes, many in name indeed, but of scant numbers. The most dreaded savages in the New World were the Iroquois or FiveNations, living south of Lake Ontario. Yet they were never able tomuster more than about twenty-two hundred fighting men. 

The canoes were skirting the western bank, driven by the current, whenone voyageur called to another:

"My scalp for the sight of an Indian!"

"Halt!" the forward paddler answered. "Look to thy scalp, lad, for hereis the Indian!"

There was no feathered head in ambush, but they saw moccasin prints inthe 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 offour return. Some Indian village is near. It would be my counsel toapproach and offer friendship. "

"Shall we take the men?" debated Jolliet. "Two of them at least shouldstay 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 themissionary. The path led through prairie grass, gay at that seasonwith flowers. The delicate buttercup-like sensitive plant shrank fromtheir feet in wet places. Neither Frenchman had yet seen the deadlyrattlesnake of these southern countries, singing as a great fly mightsing in a web, dart out of its spotted spiral to fasten a death biteupon a victim. They walked in silence, dreading only the human beingsthey were going to meet. When they had gone about two leagues, thepath drew near the wooded bank of a little stream draining into theMississippi which they had scarcely noticed from the canoes. Therethey saw an Indian village, and farther off, up a hill, more groups ofwigwams. They heard the voices of children, and nobody suspected theirapproach. 

Jolliet and Marquette halted. Not knowing how else to announce theirpresence, they shouted together as loud as they could shout. The savagesran out of their wigwams and darted about in confusion until they sawthe two motionless white men. The long black cassock of Marquette hadinstant effect upon them. For their trinkets and a few garments on theirbodies showed that they had trafficked with Europeans. 

Four old Indians, slowly and with ceremony, came out to meet theexplorers, 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 greatAlgonquin family, which embraced nearly all northern aboriginal nations, with the notable exception of the Iroquois, these people had a dialectwhich the missionary could understand. The name Illinois meant "TheMen. "

Marquette and Jolliet were led to the principal lodge. Outside the door, waiting for them, stood another old Indian like a statue of wrinkledbronze. For he had stripped himself to do honor to the occasion, andheld up his hands to screen his face from the sun, making graceful anddignified gestures as he greeted the strangers. 

"How bright is the sun when you come to see us, O Frenchmen! Our lodgesare 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 hislips, but Jolliet, used to the tobacco weed, puffed with a good will. 

The entire village then formed a straggling procession, gazing at theFrenchmen, whom they guided farther to the chief's town. He also metthem standing with a naked retinue at his door, and the calumet wasagain smoked. 

The Illinois lodges were shaped like the rounded cover of an emigrantwagon, high, and very long, having an opening left along the top forthe escape of smoke. They were made of rush mats, which the women wove, overlapped as shingles on a framework of poles. Rush mats also carpetedthe ground, except where fires burned in a row along the middle. Eachfire was used by two families who lived opposite, in stalls made ofblankets. The ends of the lodge had flaps to shut out the weather, butthese were left wide open to the summer sun. During visits of ceremony aguest stood where he could be seen and heard by all who could crowd intothe wigwam. But when the Illinois held important councils they made acircular inclosure, and built a camp-fire in the center. Many familiesand many fires filled a long wigwam, though Jolliet and Marquette werelodged with the chief, who had one for himself and his household. 

Whitening embers were sending threads of smoke towards a strip of bluesky overhead when the missionary stood up to explain his errand in thecrowded inclosure, dividing his talk into four parts with presents. By the first gift of cloth and beads he told his listeners that theFrenchmen were voyaging in peace to visit nations on the river. By thesecond he said:

"I declare to you that God, your Creator, has pity on you, since, whenyou 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 acknowledgeand obey him. "

By the third gift they were informed that the chief of the French hadspread peace and overcome the Iroquois. And the last begged for all theinformation they could give about the sea and intervening nations. 

When Marquette sat down, the chief stood up and laid his hand on thehead of a little slave, prisoner from another tribe. 

"I thank you, Blackgown, " he said, "and you, Frenchman, for taking somuch 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 andfree from rocks, which your canoes removed as they passed! Never has ourtobacco had so fine a flavor, nor our corn appeared so beautiful as wefind it to-day. Here is my son. I give him to you that you may know myheart. Take pity on us and all our nation. You know the Great Spirit whomade all: you speak to him and hear him; ask him to give us life andhealth and come and dwell with us. "

When the chief had presented his guests with the Indian boy, and againoffered the calumet, he urged them, with belts and garters of buffalowool, brilliantly dyed, to go no farther down the great river, onaccount of dangers. These compliments being ended, a feast was broughtin four courses. First came a wooden dish of sagamity or corn-mealboiled in water and grease. The chief took a buffalo-horn spoon and fedhis guests as if they had been little children; three or four spoonfulshe 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 ownfingers, blew on the food to cool it, and stuffed the explorers withall he could make them accept. It was their part to open their mouthsas young birds do. The third course was that most delicate of Indiandishes, a fine dog; but seeing that his guests shrank from this, thechief 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 IllinoisRiver by the Iroquois. The Illinois nation was made up of several unitedtribes: Kaskaskias, Peorias, Kahokias, Tamaroas, and Moingona. Flightscattered them, and these were only a few of their villages. Theyafterwards returned to their own land. Their chief wore a scarf or beltof fur crossing his left shoulder, encircling his waist and hanging infringe. Arm and leg bands ornamented him, and he also had knee rattlesof deer hoofs. Paint made of colored clays streaked his face. Thisattractive creature sent the Indian crier around, beating a drum of deerhide stretched over a pot, to proclaim the calumet dance in honor of theexplorers. 

Marquette and Jolliet were led out in the prairie to a small grovewhich sheltered the assembly from the afternoon sun. Even the womenleft their maize fields and the beans, melons, and squashes that theywere cultivating, and old squaws dropped rush braiding, and withpapooses 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 withthe French. Young braves imitated the gravity of their elders at thisimportant ceremony. The Illinois never ate new fruits or bathed at thebeginning of summer, without first dancing the calumet. 

A large gay mat of rushes was spread in the center of the grove, andthe warrior selected to dance put his god, or manitou--some tiny carvenimage which he carried around his person and to which he prayed--onthe mat beside a beautiful calumet. Around them he spread his bow andarrows, his war club, and stone hatchet. The pipe was made of red rocklike brilliantly polished marble, hollowed to hold tobacco. A sticktwo feet long, as thick as a cane, formed the stem. For the dance thesepipes were often decked with gorgeous scarlet, green, and iridescentfeathers, though white plumes alone made them the symbol of peace, andred quills bristled over them for war. 

[Illustration: War Club. ]

Young squaws and braves who were to sing, sat down on the ground in agroup near the mat; but the multitude spread in a great circle aroundit. Men of importance before taking their seats on the short grass, eachin turn lifted the calumet, which was filled, and blew a little smokeon the manitou. Then the dancer sprang out, and, with graceful curvingsin time to the music, seized the pipe and offered it now to the sun andnow to the earth, made it dance from mouth to mouth along the lines ofspectators, with all its fluttering plumes spread. The hazy sun shoneslanting among branches, tracing a network of flickering leaf shadowson 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 dancersprang into the circle and took the weapons from the mat to fight withthe principal dancer, who had no defense but the calumet. With measuredsteps and a floating motion of the body the two advanced and attacked, parried and retreated, until the man with the pipe drove his enemy fromthe ring. Papooses of a dark brick-red color watched with glisteningblack eyes the last part of the dance, which celebrated victory. Thenames of nations fought, the prisoners taken, and all the trophiesbrought 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 ringuntil all had held it. Then the chief approached the white men. 

"Blackgown, " he said, "and you, Frenchman, I give you this peace-pipeto be your safeguard wherever you go among the tribes. It shall befeathered with white plumes, and displaying it you may march fearlesslyamong enemies. It has power of life and death, and honor is paid to itas to a manitou. Blackgown, I give you this calumet in token of peacebetween your governor and the Illinois, and to remind you of yourpromise to come again and instruct us in your religion. "

The explorers slept soundly all night in the chief's lodge, feeling assafe as among Christian Indians of the north, who stuck thorns in acalendar to mark Sundays and holy days. Next morning the chief went withseveral hundred of his people to escort them to their canoes; but itwas three o'clock in the afternoon before the voyageurs, dropping downstream, 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. Theypassed the mouth of the Illinois River without knowing its name, orthat it flowed through lands owned by the tribe that had given themthe peace-pipe. Farther on, the Mississippi made one of its many bends, carrying them awhile directly eastward, and below great rocks likecastles. As the canoes ran along the foot of this east shore, some ofthe voyageurs cried out. For on the face of the cliff far up were twopainted monsters in glaring red, green, and black; each as large as acalf, with deer horns, blood-colored eyes, tiger beard, a human face, and a body covered with scales. Coiled twice around the middle, over thehead, and passing between the hind legs of each, extended a tail thatended like a fish. So startling was this sight, which seemed a bannerheld aloft heralding unseen dangers, that the men felt threatened by ademon. But Marquette laughed at them and beckoned for the canoes to bebrought together. 

"What manner of thing is this, Sieur Jolliet?"

"A pair of manitous, evidently. If we had Indians with us, we should seethem toss a little tobacco out as an offering in passing by. "

"I cannot think, " said Marquette, "that any Indian has been thedesigner. 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 hardto get conveniently at them to paint them. And how could such colors bemixed in this wilderness?"

"We have seen what pigments and clays the Illinois used in daubingthemselves. These wild tribes may have among them men with natural skillin delineating, " said Jolliet. 

"I will draw them off, " Marquette determined, bringing out the papers onwhich he set down his notes; and while the men stuck their paddles inthe water to hold the canoes against the current, he made his drawing. 

One of the monsters seen by the explorers remained on those rocks untilthe middle of our own century. It was called by the Indians the Piasa. More than two centuries of beating winter storms had not effaced thebrilliant picture when it was quarried away by a stupidly barbarouscivilization. The town of Alton, in the state of Illinois, is a littlesouth of that rock where the Piasa dragons were seen. 

As the explorers moved ahead on glassy waters, they looked back, and theline of vision changing, they saw that the figures were cut into thecliff and painted in hollow relief. 

They were still talking about the monsters when they heard the roar of arapid 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 withmud, noisy as a storm, eddying islands of branches, stumps, whole trees, took possession of the fair stream they had followed so long. It shotacross the current of the Mississippi in entering so that the canoesdanced like eggshells and were dangerously forced to the eastern bank. Afterwards they learned that this was the Pekitanoüi, or, as we now callit, the Missouri River, which flows into the Mississippi not far abovethe present city of St. Louis; and that by following it to its headwaters and making a short portage across a prairie, a man might in timeenter the Red or Vermilion Sea of California. 

Having slipped out of the Missouri's reach, the explorers were nextthreatened by a whirlpool among rocks before they reached the mouth ofOuaboukigou, the Ohio River. They saw purple, red, and violet earths, which ran down in streams of color when wet, and a sand which stainedtheir paddles like blood. Tall canes began to feather the shore, andmosquitoes tormented them as they pressed on through languors of heat. Jolliet and Marquette made awnings of sails which they had brought as ahelp to the paddles. They were floating down the current of the muddy, swollen river when they saw Indians with guns on the east shore. Thevoyageurs dropped their paddles and seized their own weapons. Marquettestood up and spoke to the Indians in Huron. They made no answer. He heldup the white calumet. Then they began to beckon, and when the party drewto land, they made it clear that they had themselves been frighteneduntil 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 glassbottles holding gunpowder, for which they had traded with white peopleeastward. 

They fed the French with buffalo meat and white plums, and declared itwas but a ten days' journey to the sea. In this they were mistaken, forit 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 ofthe prayer. For each he had a wampum girdle to hold while he talked, andto leave for a remembrance. His words without a witness would beforgotten. 

Three hundred miles farther the explorers ventured, and had nearlyreached the mouth of the Arkansas River, floating on a wide expanse ofwater between lofty woods, when they heard wild yelling on the westshore, and saw a crowd of savages pushing out huge wooden canoes tosurround them. Some swam to seize the Frenchmen, and a war club wasthrown over their heads. Marquette held up the peace-pipe, but the wildyoung braves in the water paid no attention to it. Arrows were readyto fly from all sides, and Marquette held the peace-pipe on high andcontinually prayed. At once old Indians restrained the young ones. Intheir turmoil they had not at first seen the calumet; but two chiefscame directly out to bring the strangers ashore. 

Not one of the missionary's six languages was understood by theseIndians. He at last found a man who spoke a little Illinois, and Jollietand he were able to explain their errand. He preached by presents, andobtained a guide to the next nation. 

On that part of the river where the French came to a halt, the Spanishexplorer De Soto was said to have died two hundred years before. In thisregion the Indians had never seen snow, and their land yielded threecrops a year. Their pots and plates were of baked earth, and they keptcorn in huge gourds, or in baskets woven of cane fibers. They knewnothing of beaver skins; their furs were the hides of buffaloes. Watermelons grew abundantly in their fields. Though they had largewigwams of bark, they wore no clothing, and hung beads from theirpierced noses and ears. 

These Akamsea, or Arkansas Indians showed traits of the Aztecs underSpanish dominion; for what is now the state of Texas was then claimedby Spain. Marquette and Jolliet held a council. They were certain thatthe great river discharged itself into the Gulf of Mexico. If theyventured farther, they might fall into the hands of Spaniards, who wouldimprison them; or they might be killed by fiercer tribes than any yetencountered, and in either case their discoveries would be lost. So theydecided to turn back. 

All day the Arkansas feasted them with merciless savage hospitality, andit was not polite to refuse food or the attention of rocking. Two stoutIndians would seize a voyageur between them and rock him back and forthfor hours. If the motion nauseated him, that was his misfortune. 

Pierre Porteret crept out behind one of the bark lodges looking verymiserable in the fog of early morning. His companion on many a longjourney, 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 therest of us. And they would have saved the good father, no doubt, sincethe chief came and danced the calumet before him. "

"Were these red cradle-rockers intending to make an end of us in thenight?"

"So the chief says; but he broke up the council, and will set us safelyon our journey up river to-day. "

"I am glad of that, " said Pierre. "Father Marquette hath not thestrength of the Sieur Jolliet for such rude wanderings. These southernmists, and torturing insects, and clammy heats, and the bad food haveworked a great change in him. "

"We have been gone but two months from the Mission of St. Ignace, " saidJacques. "They have the bigness of years. "

"And many more months that have the bigness of years will pass before wesee it again. "

They grew more certain of this, when, after toiling up the currentthrough malarial nights and sweltering days, the explorers left theMississippi and entered the river Illinois. There, above Peoria Lake, another Illinois town of seventy-four lodges was found, and theseKaskaskias so clung to the Blackrobe that he promised to come backand teach them. From the head waters of the Illinois a portage wasmade to Lake Michigan, and the French returned to the Bay of the Puansalongshore. They had traveled over twenty-five hundred miles, andaccomplished the object of their journey. 

Jolliet, with his canoe of voyageurs, his maps and papers, and the youngIndian boy given him by the Illinois chief, went on to Montreal. Hiscanoe was upset in the rapids of Lachine just above Montreal, and helost two men, the Indian boy, his papers, and nearly everything excepthis life. But he was able to report to the governor all that he had seenand done. 

Marquette lay ill, at the Bay of the Puans, of dysentery, brought on byhardship; and he was never well again. Being determined, however, to goback and preach to the tribe on the Illinois River, he waited all winterand all the next summer to regain his strength. He carefully wrote outand sent to Canada the story of his discoveries and labors. In autumn, with Pierre Porteret and the voyageur Jacques, he ventured again to theIllinois. Once he became so ill they were obliged to stop and build hima 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 theImmaculate Conception, on the Illinois River, through snow, and waterand mud, hunger and misery. He preached until after Easter, when, hisstrength being exhausted, Pierre and Jacques undertook to carry him hometo the Mission of St. Ignace. Marquette had been two years away from hispalisaded 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 canoealong the east side of that great lake known now as Michigan. A creekparted the rugged coast, and dipping near its shallow mouth they lookedanxiously 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' trampingthe wilderness. But their eyes dwelt most piteously on the dying manstretched 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 andJacques felt that no lovelier, kinder being than this scarcely breathingmissionary would ever float on the blue water under that blue sky. 

He opened his eyes and saw the creek they were slipping past, and apleasant 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 takeyou farther. "

"Carry me ashore here, " he whispered again. 

So they entered the creek and took him ashore, building a fire andsheltering him as well as they could. There a few hours afterward hedied, the weeping men holding up his cross before him, while he thankedthe Divine Majesty for letting him die a poor missionary. When he couldno longer speak, they repeated aloud the prayers he had taught them. 

They left him buried on that shore with a large cross standing over hisgrave. Later his Indians removed his bones to the Mission of St. Ignace, with a procession of canoes and a priest intoning. They were placedunder the altar of his own chapel. If you go to St. Ignace, you may seea monument now on that spot, and people have believed they traced thefoundation of the old bark chapel. But the spot where he first lay waslong venerated. 

A great fur trader and pioneer named Gurdon Hubbard made this recordabout the place, which he visited in 1818:--

"We reached Marquette River, about where the town of Ludington nowstands on the Michigan shore. This was where Father Marquette died, about one hundred and forty years before, and we saw the remains of ared-cedar cross, erected by his men at the time of his death to mark hisgrave; and though his remains had been removed to the Mission, at PointSt. 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. Itwas about three feet above the ground, and in a falling condition. Wereset it, leaving it out of the ground about two feet, and as I neversaw it after, I doubt not that it was covered by the drifting sands ofthe 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 underhis chapel altar nearly two years and a half, the first ship ever seenupon the lakes was sighted off St. Ignace. Hurons and Ottawas, Frenchtraders, and coureurs de bois, or wood-rangers, ran out to see thehuge winged creature scudding betwixt Michilimackinac Island and RoundIsland. She was of about forty-five tons' burden. Five cannon showedthrough her port-holes, and as she came nearer, a carved dragon was seento be her figurehead; she displayed the name Griffin and bore the whiteflag of France. The priest himself felt obliged to receive her company, for three Récollet friars, in the gray robe of St. Francis, appeared onthe deck. But two men, one in a mantle of scarlet and gold, and theother 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 startedto run; then turned back to see her drop her sails and her anchor, andcome up in that deep crescent-shaped bay. She had weathered a hard stormin Lake Huron; but the men who handled her ropes were of little interestto 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 boissaid to another. "And this is the ship he hath been building at Niagara. First one hears that creditors have seized his fort of Frontenac, andthen one beholds him sailing here in state, as though naught on earthcould 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 labora voyageur ever undertook. I have heard he is himself tough as iron. Butmen hereabouts who have been in his service will take to the woods whenthey hear he has arrived; traders that he sent ahead with goods. If hegets 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 heardof this Sieur Robert Cavelier de la Salle ever since he came to theprovince more than ten years ago, but I never saw him before. Is it truethat Count Frontenac is greatly bound to him?"

"So true that Sieur de la Salle thereby got favor at court. It was atcourt that a prince recommended to him yon swart Italian in white andgold that he brought with him on his last voyage from France. Now, thereis 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 bothwrists. "

"His left hand is on his sword hilt. Doth he not hold the right a littlestiffly?"

"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 inEuropean wars and fitted with a copper hand, he was yet recommended toSieur 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 owncountry. "

The coureur de bois, who had reached the settlement later than hiscompanion, grunted. 

"One would say thou wert of the Griffin crew thyself, with the latestnews from Quebec and Montreal. "

"Not I, " laughed the first one. "I have only been in the woods withGreysolon 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 duLhut's cousin, and his name is Henri de Tonty. "

"I will say this for Monsieur Henri de Tonty: a better made man neverstepped 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. Whenthese men were gathered in a settlement, spending what they had earnedin drinking and gaming, it was hard to restrain them within civilizedbounds. But when they took service to shoulder loads and march into thewilderness, the strongest hand could not keep them from open rebellionand desertion. There were few devoted and faithful voyageurs, suchas Pierre Porteret and Jacques had proved themselves in followingMarquette. The term of service was usually two years; but at the firsthardship some might slip away in the night, even at the risk ofperishing before they reached the settlements. 

St. Ignace made a procession behind La Salle's party and followed theminto the chapel to hear mass--French traders, Ottawas, Hurons, coureursde bois, squaws, and children. When the priest turned from the altar, helooked down on complexions ranging from the natural pallor of La Salleto 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 ledthere from his earlier mission, afterwards wandered to Detroit andSandusky, the priests having decided to abandon St. Ignace and burn thechapel. In our own day we hear of their descendants as settled in theIndian Territory, the smallest but wealthiest band of all transplantedIndians. 

Having entered the lake region with impressive ceremonies, which hewell knew how to employ before ignorant men and savages, La Salle threwaside his splendor, and, with his lieutenant, put on the buckskins formarching and canoe journeying into the wilderness. Some of the men hehad sent up the lakes with goods nearly a year before had collecteda large store of furs, worth much money; and these he determined tosend back to Canada on the Griffin, to satisfy his creditors and to givehim means for carrying on his plans. He had meant, after sending Tontyon 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 dividehis party and send Tonty with some of the men to Sault Ste. Marie afterplunderers who had made off with his goods. The others would doubtlessdesert if left any length of time without a leader. It was a risk alsoto send his ship back to the colony without standing guard over itssafety himself. But he greatly needed the credit which its load of furswould give him. So he determined to send it manned as it was, withorders to return to the head of Lake Michigan as soon as the cargo wassafely landed; while he voyaged down the west side of the lake, andTonty, returning from the Sault, came by the east shore. The reunitedparty 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 ofthe Mississippi, when that could be reached. Around each of these, andprotected by them, he foresaw settlements of French and Indians, anda vast trade in furs and the products of the undeveloped west. ThusFrance would acquire a province many times its own size. The undertakingwas greater than conquering a kingdom. Nobody else divined at that timethe wonderful promise of the west as La Salle pictured it. Littleattention had been paid to the discoveries of Marquette and Jolliet. France would have got no benefit from them had not La Salle so soonfollowed on the track of missionary and trader, verified what had beendone, and pushed on. 

He had seen Jolliet twice. The first time they met near Niagara, whenboth were exploring; the second time, Jolliet is said to have stoppedwith his maps and papers before they were lost at Fort Frontenac, onhis return from his Mississippi voyage. La Salle, then master of FortFrontenac, must have examined these charts and journals with interest. It does not appear that the two men were ever very friendly. Jollietwas too easily satisfied to please La Salle; he had not the ability tospread France's dominion over the whole western wilderness, and that waswhat La Salle was planning to do before Marquette and Jolliet set outfor the Mississippi. 

St. Ignace became once more the starting point of an importantexpedition, though La Salle, before sending the Griffin back, sailed inher 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 proweastward, and he turned south with fourteen men in four canoes, carryingtools, arms, goods, and even a blacksmith's forge. 

Through storm, and famine, and peril with Indians they labored down thelake, and did not reach the place where they were to meet Tonty untilthe 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 helpedto open the wilderness and who carried religion to savages is abeautiful chapter of our national life. 

Tonty was not at the place where they were to meet him. This was themouth of the St. Joseph River, which La Salle named the Miamis. The mendid not want to wait, for they were afraid of starving if they reachedthe Illinois country after the Indians had scattered to winter huntinggrounds. But La Salle would not go on until Tonty appeared. He put themen to work building a timber stockade, which he called Fort Miamis;thus beginning in the face of discouragement his plan of creating a lineof fortifications. 

Tonty, delayed by lack of provisions and the need of hunting, reachedFort Miamis with his men in twenty days. But the Griffin did not comeat all. More than time enough had passed for her to reach Fort Niagara, unload her cargo, and return. La Salle watched the lake constantly forher sails. He began to be heavy-hearted for her, but he dared wait nolonger; 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 theSt. 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 hadreached that curve of the river where South Bend now stands, they leftSt. Joseph to grope for the Theakiki, or Kankakee, a branch called bysome Indians the Illinois itself. 

La Salle became separated from the party on this portage, eagerly andfearlessly scouring the woods for the river's beginning. Tonty campedand waited for him, fired guns, called, and searched; but he was goneall night and until the next afternoon. The stars were blotted overhead, for a powder of snow thickened the air, weirdly illuminating naked treesin the darkness, but shutting in his vision. It was past midnight whenhe 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 lethis people know he was approaching. Echoes rolled through the woods. Without waiting for a shot in reply he hurried to the fire. No personwas near it. The descending snow hissed, caught in the flames. Here wasa home hearth prepared in the wilderness, and no welcome to it butsilence. La Salle called out in every Indian language he knew. Deadbranches grated, and the stream rustled betwixt its edges of ice. A heapof dry grass was gathered for a bed under a tree by the fire, and itselastic top showed the hollow where a man had lain. La Salle put somemore wood on the fire, piled a barricade of brush around the bed, andlay down in a place left warm by some strolling Indian whom his gun hadfrightened away. He slept until morning. In the afternoon he found hisown camp. 

From the first thread of the Kankakee oozing out of swamps to the Indiantown on the Illinois River where Marquette had done his last missionarywork, was a long canoe journey. It has been said the rivers of the NewWorld 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 stoodempty. La Salle's men were famished for supplies, so he ventured to openthe covered pits in which the Indians stored their corn. Nothing wasmore precious than this hidden grain; but he paid for what he took whenhe reached the Indians. This was not until after New Year's day. He haddescended the river as far as that expansion now called Peoria Lake. 

The Illinois, after their first panic at the appearance of strange whitemen, received La Salle's party kindly, fed all with their own fingers, and, as they had done with Jolliet and Marquette when those explorerspassed them on the Mississippi, tried to coax their guests to go nofarther. They and other Indians who came to the winter camp told suchtales of danger on that great river about which the French knew solittle, 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 itCrèvecoeur. 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 towhom he intrusted her, nothing was ever heard of her again. The furs hehad sent to pay his creditors never in any way reached port. If theyescaped shipwreck, they were stolen by the men who escaped with them. 

Nothing could bend La Salle's resolution. He meant in some way toexplore the west through which the southern Mississippi ran. But theloss of the Griffin hurt him sorely. He could not go on without moresupplies; and having no vessel to bring them, the fearful necessity wasbefore him of returning on foot and by canoe to Fort Frontenac to bringthem himself. 

He began to build another ship on the Illinois River, and needed cablesand rigging for her. This vessel being partly finished by the first ofMarch, he left her and Fort Crèvecoeur in Tonty's charge, and, takingfour Frenchmen and a Mohegan hunter, set out on the long and terriblejourney to Fort Frontenac. 

The Italian commandant with the copper hand could number on its metalfingers the only men to be trusted in his garrison of fifteen. OneRécollet, Father Louis Hennepin, had been sent with two companions byLa Salle to explore the upper Mississippi. Father Ribourde and FatherMembré remained. The young Sieur de Boisrondet might also be reliedon, as well as a Parisian lad named Étienne Renault, and their servantL'Esperance. As for the others, smiths, shipwrights, and soldiers wereready to mutiny any moment. They cared nothing about the discovery ofthe 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 fellowsloved their own wills better. 

The two men that La Salle had sent to look for the Griffin arrived atFort Crèvecoeur, bearing a message from him, having met him on theway. 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 greatrock he had noticed opposite the Illinois town. Whatever La Salle wanteddone Tonty was anxious to accomplish, though separating himself fromCrèvecoeur, even for a day, was a dangerous experiment. But he tooksome 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 FortCrèvecoeur and the partly finished ship had to be abandoned. Tontydispatched four men to warn La Salle of the disaster. He could neitherhold this position nor fortify the rock in the midst of jealous savageswith two friars, one young officer, a lad, and one servant. He took theforge, and tools, and all that was left in Crèvecoeur into the veryheart of the Indian village and built a long lodge, shaped like thewigwams of the Illinois. This was the only way to put down theirsuspicion. Seeing that the Frenchmen had come to dwell among them, theIndians were pleased, and their women helped with poles and mats tobuild the lodge. 

For by this time, so long did it take to cover distances in thewilderness, spring and summer were past, and the Illinois were dwellingin their great town, nearly opposite the rock which La Salle desired tohave fortified. Tonty often gazed at it across the river, which flowssouthwestward there, with a ripple that does not break into actualrapids. The yellow sandstone height, rising like a square mountain outof the shore, was tufted with ferns and trees. No man could ascend itexcept at the southeast corner, and at that place a ladder or a rope wasneeded 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, andwalled at the farther side by a timbered cliff rising to a prairie. With a score of men Tonty could have held this natural fortress againstany attack. Buckets might be rigged from overhanging trees to draw upwater from the river. Provisions and ammunition only were needed for agarrison. This is now called Starved Rock, and is nearly opposite thetown of Utica. Some distance up the river is a longer ridge, yet knownas Buffalo Rock, easy of ascent at one end, up which the savages aresaid to have chased buffaloes; and precipitous at the other, down whichthe frightened beasts plunged to death. 

The tenth day of September a mellow autumn sun shone on maize fieldswhere squaws labored, on lazy old braves sprawled around buffalo robes, gambling with cherry stones, and on peaceful lodges above which the bluesmoke faintly wavered. It was so warm the fires were nearly out. Youngwarriors of the tribes were away on an expedition; but the populousIndian town swarmed with its thousands. 

Father Ribourde and Father Membré had that morning withdrawn a league upthe 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 ofa past generation slept their winters and summers away. Crows flappedacross them and settled on the corn, causing much ado among the papooseswho 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 whichbrought him across the river. When he had talked an instant old bravesbounded to their feet with furious cries, the tribes flocked out oflodges, and women and children caught the panic and came screeching. 

"What is the matter?" exclaimed Tonty, unable to understand their rapidjargon. The Frenchmen drew together with the instinct of uniting inperil, 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! TheseFrenchmen have brought the Iroquois upon us!"

"Will you stand off!" Tonty warned them. And every brave in the townknew what they called the medicine hand in his right gauntlet, powerfuland hard as a war club. They stood in awe of it as something more thanhuman. He put his followers behind him. The Frenchmen crowded back toback, facing the savage crowd. Hampered by his imperfect knowledge oftheir language, he hearkened intently to the jangle of raging voices, his keen dark eyes sweeping from face to face. Tonty was a man ofimpressive presence, who inspired confidence even in Indians. They heldback from slaying him and his people, but fiercely accused him. Youngbraves dragged from the French lodge the goods and forge saved from FortCrèvecoeur, and ran yelling to heave everything into the river. 

"The Iroquois are your friends! The Iroquois are at peace with theFrench! But they are marching here to eat us up!"

"We know nothing about the Iroquois!" shouted Tonty. "If they are comingwe will go out with you to fight them!"

Only half convinced, but panic-stricken from former encounters with afoe who always drove them off their land, they turned from threateningTonty and ran to push out their canoes. Into these were put the womenand children, with supplies, and all were paddled down river to anisland, where guards could be set. The warriors then came back andprepared for fighting. They greased their bodies, painted their faces, made ready their weapons, and danced and howled to excite one anotherto courage. All night fires along shore, and leaping figures, werereflected in the dark river. 

About dawn, scouts who had been sent to watch the Iroquois came runningwith news that the enemy were almost in sight across the prairie on theopposite side, slipping under cover of woods along a small branch of theIllinois River. They had guns, pistols, and swords, and carried bucklersof rawhide. The scouts declared that a Jesuit priest and La Sallehimself led them. 

The Frenchmen's lives seemed hardly a breath long. In the midst ofmaddened, screeching savages Tonty and his men once more stood back toback, and he pushed off knives with his copper hand. 

"Do you want to kill yourselves?" he shouted. "If you kill us, theFrench governor will not leave a man of you alive! I tell you Monsieurde 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 helead tribes to fight one another? If all the Iroquois had stolen Frenchclothes, you would think an army of Jesuits and Messieurs de la Sallewere 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 gowith you now to fight them!"

At that the Illinois put their knives in their belts and ran shouting tothrow themselves into the canoes. Warfare with American Indians wasalways the rush of a mob, where every one acted for himself withoutmilitary order. 

"It is well the good friars are away making their retreat, " said Tontyto Boisrondet and Étienne Renault while they paddled as fast as theycould across the river with the Illinois. "Poor old L'Esperance must bemaking 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 andchildren, " said Étienne Renault. "I saw him go. "

And so it proved afterwards. But L'Esperance had slipped away to bringback 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 alliessaw the Iroquois. They came prancing and screeching on their savagemarch, and would have been ridiculous if they had not been appalling. These Hodenosaunee, or People of the Long House, as they calledthemselves, were the most terrible force in the New World. Tonty sawat once it would go hard with the Illinois nation. Never at any timeas hardy as their invaders, who by frequent attacks had broken theircourage, and weakened by the absence of their best warriors, theywavered in their first charge. 

He put down his gun and offered to carry a peace belt to the Iroquois tostop the fight. The Illinois gladly gave him a wampum girdle and sent ayoung Indian with him. Boisrondet and Étienne Renault also walked at hisside into the open space between two barbaric armies. The Iroquois didnot 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. TheIroquois guns seemed to flash in his face. It was like throwing himselfamong furious wolves. Snarling lips and snaky eyes and twisting sinuousbodies made nightmares around him. He felt himself seized; a youngwarrior stabbed him in the side. The knife glanced on a rib, but bloodran down his buckskins and filled his throat. 

"Stop!" shouted an Iroquois chief. "This is a Frenchman; his ears arenot pierced. "

Tonty's swarthy skin was blanching with the anguish of his wound, whichturned him faint. His black hair clung in rings to a forehead wet withcold perspiration. But he held the wampum belt aloft and spat the bloodout of his mouth. 

"Iroquois! The Illinois nation are under the protection of the Frenchking 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 anda 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 withFrance. The wholesome dread which Governor Frontenac had given to thatname had effect on them. Besides, they had not surprised the Illinois, and if they declared a truce, time would be gained to consider theirfuture movements. 

The younger braves were quieted, and old warriors gave Tonty a beltto carry back to the Illinois. He staggered across the prairie. FatherRibourde and Father Membré, who had just reached the spot, ran to meethim, 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 thoughtit best for the Illinois to give up their town and go to protect theirwomen and children, while he attempted as long as possible to keep theinvaders at bay. Lodges were set on fire, and the Illinois withdrewquietly down river, leaving some of their men in the bluffs less than aleague from the town, to bring them word of the result. The Frenchmen, partially rebuilding their own lodge, which had been wrecked when theirgoods were thrown in the river, stood their ground in the midst ofinsulting savages. 

For the Iroquois, still determined on war and despoiling, opened maizepits, scattering and burning the grain; trampled corn in the fields; andeven pulled the dead off their scaffolds. They were angry at the Frenchfor threatening them with that invisible power of France, and bent onchasing the Illinois. Yet Tonty was able to force a kind of treatybetween them and the retreating nation, through the men left in thebluffs. As soon as they had made it, however, they began canoes of elmbark, to follow the Illinois down river. 

Two or three days passed, while the Frenchmen sat covering the invadedtribe's retreat. They scarcely slept at night. Their enemies prowledaround their lodge or celebrated dances on the ruins of the town. The river flowed placidly, and the sun shone on desolation and onthe unaltered ferny buttresses of the great rock and its castellatedneighbors. Tonty heard with half delirious ears the little creatureswhich sing in the grass and fly before man, but return to their singingas soon as he passes by. The friars dressed and tended his feveredwound, and when the Iroquois sent for him to come to a council, FatherMembré went with him. 

Within the rude fort of posts and poles saved from ruined lodges, whichthe Iroquois had built for themselves, adding a ruff of freshly choppedtrees, the two white men sat down in a ring of glowering savages. Sixpacks of beaver skins were piled ready for the oration; and the oratorrose and addressed Tonty. 

With the first two the Indian spokesman promised that his nation wouldnot 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 wouldmove easily in traveling. 

The next said that the sun was bright. 

And the sixth and last pack ordered the French to get up and leavethe country. 

When the speaker sat down, Tonty came to his feet and looked at thebeaver skins piled before them. Then he looked around the circle of hardweather-beaten faces and restless eyes, and thanked the Iroquois fortheir gift. 

"But I would know, " said Tonty, "how soon you yourselves intend toleave the country and let the Illinois be in peace?"

There was a growl, and a number of the braves burst out with thedeclaration that they intended to eat Illinois flesh first. 

Tonty raised his foot and kicked the beaver skins from him. In that veryway they would have rejected a one-sided treaty themselves. Up theysprang with drawn knives and drove him and Father Membré from the fort. 

All night the French stood guard for fear of being surprised andmassacred in their lodge. At daybreak the chiefs ordered them to gowithout 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, andwith 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 andthe southward current of the western shore, " says a writer exact inknowledge, "naturally made the St. Joseph portage a return route toCanada, and the Chicago portage an outbound one. " But though La Sallewas a careful observer and must have known that what was then called theChekago River afforded a very short carrying to the Desplaines or upperIllinois, he saw fit to use the St. Joseph both coming and going. 

His march to Fort Frontenac he afterwards described in a letter to oneof the creditors interested in his discoveries. 

"Though the thaws of approaching spring greatly increased the difficultyof the way, interrupted as it was everywhere by marshes and rivers, tosay nothing of the length of the journey, which is about five hundredleagues in a direct line, and the danger of meeting Indians of four orfive different nations, through whose country we were to pass, as wellas an Iroquois army which we knew was coming that way; though we mustsuffer all the time from hunger; sleep on the open ground, and oftenwithout food; watch by night and march by day, loaded with baggage, suchas blanket, clothing, kettle, hatchet, gun, powder, lead, and skins tomake moccasins; sometimes pushing through thickets, sometimes climbingrocks covered with ice and snow; sometimes wading whole days throughmarshes where the water was waist deep or even more, --all this did notprevent me from going to Fort Frontenac to bring back the things weneeded and to learn myself what had become of my vessel. "

Carrying their canoes where the river was frozen, and finally leavingthem hidden near where the town of Joliet now stands, La Salle and hismen 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 theGriffin. They said they had been around the lake and could learn nothingof her. He then directed them to Tonty, while he marched up the easternshore. This Michigan region was debatable ground among the Indians, where they met to fight; and he left significant marks on the trees, tomake prowlers think he had a large war party. A dozen or twenty rovingsavages, ready to pounce like ferocious wildcats on a camp, alwayspeeled white places on the trees, and cut pictures there of their totem, or tribe mark, and the scalps and prisoners they had taken. Theyrespected a company more numerous than themselves, and avoided it. 

Stopping to nurse the sick when some fell ill of exposure, or to buildcanoes when canoes were needed, La Salle did not reach Fort Niagarauntil Easter, and it was May when Fort Frontenac came into view. 

No man ever suffered more from treachery. Before he could gettogether the supplies he needed, trouble after trouble fell upon him. The men that Tonty had sent to tell him about the destruction of FortCrèvecoeur were followed by others who brought word that the desertershad destroyed his forts at the St. Joseph River and Niagara, and carriedoff all the goods. The Griffin was certainly lost. And before going backto the Illinois country he was obliged to chase these fellows and takefrom them what could be recovered. But when everybody else seemedto be against him, it was much comfort to remember he had a faithfullieutenant while the copper-handed Italian lived. 

La Salle gathered twenty-five men of trades useful to him, and anotheroutfit with all that he needed for a ship, having made new arrangementswith his creditors; and going by way of Michilimackinac, he reached theSt. Joseph early in November. 

Whenever, in our own day, we see the Kankakee still gliding along itsrocky bed, or the solemn Illinois spreading betwixt wooded banks, it iseasy to imagine a birch canoe just appearing around a bend, carrying LaSalle or Tonty, and rowed by buckskin-clad voyageurs. On the Kankakeethousands of buffaloes filled the plains, and La Salle's party killedmany, preparing the flesh in dried flakes by smoking it. 

The buffaloes were left behind when they approached the great town onthe Illinois. La Salle glanced up at the rock he wanted fortified, butno palisade or Frenchman was to be seen. 

"It seems very quiet, " he said to the men in his canoe, "and we have notpassed a hunter. There--there is the meadow where the town stood; butwhere is the town?"

Heaps of ashes, charred poles, broken scaffolds, wolves prowling wherepapooses had played, crows whirling in black clouds or sitting in rowson naked branches, bones, --a horrible waste plain had taken the place ofthe town. 

The Frenchmen scattered over it, eagerly seeking some trace of Tonty andhis companions. They labored all day, until the sun set, among dreadfulsights which they could never forget, without finding any clue to hisfate. 

They piled charred wood together and made a fire and camped among ruins. But La Salle lay awake all night, watching the sharp-pointed autumnstars march overhead, and suffering what must have seemed the mostunendurable of all his losses. 

Determined not to give up his friend, he rose next morning and helpedthe men hide their heavy freight in the rocks, leaving two of them tohide with and guard it, and went on down the Illinois River. On one bankthe retreat of the invaded tribe could be traced, and on the other thedead camp-fires of the Iroquois who had followed them. But of Tonty andhis Frenchmen there was still no sign. 

La Salle saw the ruins of Fort Crèvecoeur and his deserted vessel. Andso searching he came to the mouth of the Illinois and saw for the firsttime that river of his ambitions, the Mississippi. There he turned back, leaving a letter tied to a tree, on the chance of its sometime fallinginto the hands of Tonty. There was nothing to do but to take his men andgoods from among the rocks near the destroyed town and return to FortMiamis, on the St. Joseph, which some of his followers had rebuilt. Thewinter 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 springpermitted him to take the next step, he began at once to work on Indianhunters, and to draw their tribes towards forming a settlement aroundthe rock he meant to fortify on the Illinois. Had he been able to attachturbulent voyageurs to him as he attached native tribes, his heroic lifewould have ended in success even beyond his dreams. Tonty could betterdeal with ignorant men, his military training standing him in goodstead; yet Tonty dared scarcely trust a voyageur out of his sight. 

While Tonty and La Salle were passing through these adventures, theRécollet father, Louis Hennepin, and his two companions, sent by LaSalle, explored the upper Mississippi. One of these was named MichaelAko; the other, Du Gay, a man from Picardy in France. 

They left Fort Crèvecoeur on the last day of February, twenty-fourhours before La Salle started northward, and entered the Mississippi onthe 12th of March. The great food-stocked stream afforded them plenty ofgame, wild turkeys, buffaloes, deer, and fish. The adventurers excusedthemselves from observing the Lenten season set apart by the Church forfasting; but Father Hennepin said prayers several times a day. He wasa great robust Fleming, with almost as much endurance as that hardyNorman, La Salle. 

They had paddled about a month up river through the region whereMarquette and Jolliet had descended, when one afternoon they stopped torepair their canoe and cook a wild turkey. Hennepin, with his sleevesrolled back, was daubing the canoe with pitch, and the others were busyat the fire, when a war whoop, followed by continuous yelling, echoedfrom forest to forest, and a hundred and twenty naked Sioux or DacotahIndians sprang out of boats to seize them. It was no use for FatherHennepin to show a peace-pipe or offer fine tobacco. The Frenchmen wereprisoners. And when these savages learned by questioning with signs, andby drawing on the sand with a stick, that the Miamis, whom they werepursuing to fight, were far eastward out of their reach, three or fourold warriors laid their hands on Hennepin's shaven crown and began tocry and howl like little boys. 

[Illustration: Totem of the Sioux. ]

The friar in his long gray capote or hooded garment, which fell to hisfeet, girt about the waist by a rope called the cord of St. Francis, stood, with bare toes showing on his sandals, inclining his fat headwith sympathy. He took out his handkerchief and wiped the old men'sfaces. Du Gay and Ako, in spite of the peril, laughed to see him daubthe war paint. 

"The good father hath no suspicion that these old wretches are doominghim to death, " said Ako to Du Gay. 

It appeared afterwards that this was what the ceremony meant. Forseveral days the Frenchmen, carried northward in their captors' boats, expected to die. No calumet was smoked with them; and every night oneof the old chiefs, named Aquipaguetin, who had lost a son in war andformed a particular intention of taking somebody's scalp for solace, sat by the prisoners stroking them and howling by the hour. One nightwhen the Frenchmen were forced to make their fire at the end of thecamp, Aquipaguetin sent word that he meant to finish them without moredelay. But they gave him some goods out of the store La Salle had sentwith them, and he changed his mind and concluded to wait awhile. Hecarried the bones of one of his dead relations, dried and wrapped inskins gaily ornamented with porcupine-quill work; and it was his customto lay these bones before the tribe and request that everybody blowsmoke on them. Of the Frenchmen, however, he demanded hatchets, beads, and cloth. This cunning old Sioux wanted to get all he could before theparty reached their villages, where the spoil would be divided. 

Nineteen days after their capture the prisoners were brought to a placewhich is now the site of St. Paul in the state of Minnesota, where theSioux disbanded, scattering to their separate towns. They had finallysmoked the peace-pipe with the Frenchmen; and now, fortunately withoutdisagreement, portioned their white captives and distributed the goods. Father Hennepin was given to Aquipaguetin, who promptly adopted himas a son. The Flemish friar saw with disgust his gold-embroideredvestments, which a missionary always carried with him for the impressivecelebration of mass, displayed on savage backs and greatly admired. 

The explorers were really in the way of seeing as much of theupper Mississippi as they could desire. They were far north of theWisconsin's mouth, where white men first entered the great river. The young Mississippi, clear as a mountain stream, gathered many smalltributaries. St. Peter's joined it from a blue-earth channel. Thisrugged northern world was wonderfully beautiful, with valleys andheights and rocks and waterfalls. 

The Sioux were tall, well-made Indians, and so active that the smallerFrenchmen could hardly keep up with them on the march. They sometimescarried Du Gay and Ako over streams, but the robust friar they forced towade or swim; and when he lagged lame-footed with exhaustion across theprairies, they set fire to grass behind him, obliging him to take to hisheels with them or burn. By adoption into the family of Aquipaguetinhe had a large relationship thrust upon him, for the old weeper hadmany wives and children and other kindred. Hennepin indeed felt thathe was not needed and might at any time be disposed of. He never hadthat confidence in his father Aquipaguetin which a son should reposein 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 felldown on a bear robe. The village was on an island in a sheet of waterafterwards called Lake Buade. Hennepin was kindly received by his newfamily, who fed him as well as they were able, for the Sioux had littlefood when they were not hunting. Seeing him so feeble, they gave him anIndian sweating bath, which he found good for his health. They made alodge of skins so tight that it would hold heat, and put into it stonesbaked to a white heat. On these they poured water and shut Hennepin inthe steam until he sweated freely. 

The Sioux had two kinds of lodges--one somewhat resembling those of theIllinois, the other a cone of poles with skins stretched around, calleda tepee. 

Father Hennepin did little missionary work among these Indians. Hesuffered much from hunger, being a man who loved good cheer. But thetribes went on a buffalo hunt in July and killed plenty of meat. Allthat northern world was then clothed in vivid verdure. Honeysuckles andwild grapevines made the woods fragrant. The gentian, which jealouslycloses its blue-fringed cup from the human eye, grew close to the lakes. Captive though the Frenchmen were, they could not help enjoying theevening camp-fire with its weird flickerings against the dark of savageforests, the heat-lightning which heralded or followed storms, thewaters, clear, as if filtered through icebergs, dashing in foam overmossy 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. Theseproved to be the great ranger Greysolon du Lhut and four otherFrenchmen. 

This man, cousin to Tonty, passed nearly his whole life in the woods, going from Indian town to Indian town, or planting outposts of hisown in the wilderness. Occasionally he went to France, and the king'smagnificence at Versailles was endured by him until he could gain somedesired point from the colonial minister and hurry back. The governmentrelied on him to keep lawless coureurs de bois within bounds, and hetraded with nearly all the western tribes. When Greysolon du Lhutappeared, the Sioux treated their prisoners with deference; and fromthat 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 andguarded it in ways which seemed best to him, it was often expedient tochange one's plan of action. About the time that Tonty was obliged toabandon Fort Crèvecoeur, Hennepin and his companions set off eastwardwith Greysolon du Lhut's party. Hennepin sailed for France as soon as hecould and wrote a book about his adventures. It was one of La Salle'smisfortunes that this friar should finally even lay claim to discoveringthe mouth of the Mississippi, adding the glory of that to these realadventures 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 onedazzling expanse of snow, and as the party slid along on the broad, flat snowshoes to which their feet were strapped, some of them wereso blinded that the pain in their eyes became unendurable. These wereobliged 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 amillion sparkles from a world yet locked in winter. The wind chilledhis back, and he spread his hands to the camp blaze. In the tormentof snow-blindness he wondered whether Tonty was treading these whitewastes, seeking him, or lying dead of Indian wounds under the snowcrust. The talk of the other snow-blinded men, sitting about orstretched with their feet to the fire, was lost on his ear. Yet his onefaithful servant, who went with him on all his journeys, could not seeanything but calm fortitude on his face as he lifted it at the approachof snowshoes. 

"I cannot see you, Hunaut, " said La Salle. "Did you find some pineleaves?"

"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 taskwith a snow-filled kettle, "that I found also a party of Fox Indiansfrom 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 liptremble 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 GreenBay. Father Hennepin has also passed through that country on his way toMontreal. "

La Salle felt his troubles melt with the unlocking of winter. The briefbut agonizing snow-blindness passed away with a thaw; and, overtakinghis other men, he soon met the returning Illinois tribe and began theIndian settlement around the rock he intended to fortify. 

Already the Miami tribe was following him, and he drew them into analliance with the Illinois, impressively founding the principality soonto grow there. This eloquent Norman Frenchman had gifts in height andthe large bone and sinew of Normandy, which his Indian allies alwaysadmired. And he well knew where to impress his talk with coats, shirts, guns, and hunting-knives. As his holdings of land in Canada were madehis stepping-stones toward the west, so the footing he gained at FortMiamis and in the Illinois country was to be used in discovering thereal 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 andFrenchman coming together with outstretched arms and embracing. Tonty'sblack eyes were full of tears, but La Salle told his reverses as calmlyas if they were another man's. 

"Any one else, " said Father Membré, who stood by, "would abandon theenterprise, but Monsieur de la Salle has no equal for constancy ofpurpose. "

"But where is Father Ribourde?" La Salle inquired, missing the otherRécollet. 

Tonty told him sorrowfully how Father Ribourde had gone into the woodswhen his party camped, after being driven up river in a leaky boat bythe Iroquois; how they had waited and searched for him, and were finallymade aware that a band of prowling Kickapoos had murdered him. 

Tonty had aimed at Green Bay by the Chicago portage, and tramped alongthe west shore of Lake Michigan, having found it impossible to patch theboat. 

"We were nearly starved, " he said; "but we found a few ears of corn andsome frozen squashes in a deserted Indian town. When we reached the baywe found an old canoe and mended it; but as soon as we were on the waterthere rose a northwest wind with driving snow, which lasted nearly fivedays. We ate all our food, and, not knowing what to do, turned back tothe deserted town to die by a warm fire in one of the wigwams. On theway the bay froze. We camped to make moccasins out of Father Membré'scloak. I was angry at Étienne Renault for not finishing his; but heexcused himself on account of illness, having a great oppression of thestomach, caused by eating a piece of an Indian rawhide shield which hecould not digest. His delay proved our salvation, for the next day, as Iwas urging him to finish the moccasins, a party of Ottawas saw the smokeof our fire and came to us. We gave them such a welcome as never wasseen before. They took us into their canoes and carried us to an Indianvillage only two leagues off. All the Indians took pleasure in sendingus food; so, after thirty-four days of starvation, we found our famineturned to abundance. "

Tonty and La Salle, with their followers, paddled the thousand miles toFort Frontenac, to make another start into the wilderness. 

La Salle was now determined to keep his men together. He set down manyof his experiences and thoughts in letters which have been kept; so weknow at this day what was in the great explorer's mind, and how dear heheld "Monsieur de Tonty, who is full of zeal. "

On his return to the wilderness with another equipment, he went aroundthe head of Lake Michigan and made the short Chicago portage to theDesplaines River. Entering by this branch the frozen Illinois, theydragged their canoes on sledges past the site of the town and reachedopen water below Peoria Lake. La Salle gave up the plan of building aship, and determined to go on in his canoes to the mouth of theMississippi. 

So, pausing to hunt when game was needed, his company of fifty-fourpersons entered the great river, saw the Missouri rushing into it--muddycurrent and clear northern stream flowing alongside until the watersmingled. They met and overawed the Indians on both shores, buildingseveral stockades. The broad river seemed to fill a valley, doubling andwinding upon itself with innumerable curves, in its solemn and lonelystretches. Huge pieces of low-lying bank crumbled and fell in withsplashes, for the Mississippi ceaselessly eats away its own shore. 

A hundred leagues below the mouth of the Arkansas they came to a swampon the west side. Behind this swamp, they had been told, might be foundthe Arkansas tribe's great town. La Salle sent Tonty and Father Membré, with some voyageurs, to make friends with the Indians and bring him wordabout the town. 

Tonty had seen nothing like it in the New World. The houses were largeand square, of sun-baked brick, with a dome of canes overhead. The twolargest were the chief's house and the temple. Doors were the onlyopenings. Tonty and the friar were taken in where the chief sat on abedstead with his squaws, and sixty old men, in white mulberry barkcloaks, squatted by with the dignity of a council. The wives, in orderto honor the sovereign, yelled. 

The temple was a place where dead chiefs' bones were kept. A mud wallbuilt 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 oflogs was kept burning before it, and never allowed to go out, fillingthe place with smoke, and irritating the eyes of two old Indians whotended it in half darkness. The Frenchmen were not allowed to look intoa secret place where the temple treasure was kept. But, hearing itconsisted of pearls and trinkets, Tonty conjectured the Indians had gotit 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 torepresent the sun, for these lower Mississippians were sun-worshipers. 

With gifts and the grave consideration which instantly won Indians, LaSalle moved from tribe to tribe towards the Gulf. Red River pulsed uponthe course like a discharging artery. The sluggish alligator woke fromthe ooze and poked up his snout at the canoes. "He is, " says a quaintold writer who made that journey afterwards, "the most frightfulmaster-fish that can be seen. I saw one that was as large as half ahogshead. There are some, they say, as large as a hogshead and twelveto fifteen feet long. I have no doubt they would swallow up a man ifthey caught him. "

[Illustration: La Salle at the Mouth of the Mississippi. ]

In April La Salle reached his goal. He found that the Mississippidivided its current into three strands and entered the Gulf throughthree mouths. He separated his party; La Salle took the west passage, and Tonty and another lieutenant the middle and the east. At the Gulf ofMexico they came together again, and with solemn ceremonies claimed forFrance all the country along the great river's entire length, and fareastward 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 dateof the discovery, was fixed on a pillar in the shifting soil. 

Hardy as he was, La Salle sometimes fell ill from the great exposureshe endured. And more than once he was poisoned by some revengefulvoyageur. It was not until the December following his discovery of theMississippi's mouth that he realized his plan of fortifying the rockon the Illinois River. He and Tonty delighted in it, calling it FortSt. Louis of the Illinois. Storehouses and quarters for a garrison rosearound its edges, protected by a palisade. A windlass was rigged to drawwater from the river below. On the northeast corner of the rock a lowearthwork remains to this day. 

Around this natural castle the Indian tribes gathered to La Salle, as toa sovereign, --Miamis, Abenakis, and Shawanoes, from countries eastward, and the Illinois returned to spread over their beloved meadow. Insteadof one town, many towns of log, or rush, or bark lodges could be seenfrom the summit of the Rock. Years afterwards the French still spoke ofthis fortress as Le Rocher. A little principality of twenty thousandinhabitants, strong enough to repel any attack of the Iroquois, thushelped to guard it. La Salle meant to supply his people with goods andgive them a market for their furs. At this time he could almost see thesuccess of his mighty enterprise assured; he could reasonably count onstrengthening his stockades along the Mississippi, and on building nearits mouth a city which would protect the entire west and give an outletto 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. Thiswas made necessary by the change in the colonial government, which hadremoved 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 shyof civilization that he lodged in a poor street, carrying with him thevery breath of the wilderness. La Salle asked for two ships; the kinggave him four; and many people and supplies were gathered to colonizeand stock the west. 

It was La Salle's intention to sail by way of the West Indies, cross theGulf of Mexico, and enter the mouth of the Mississippi. But the Gulf ofMexico is rimmed with low marshy land, and he had never seen the mouthof the Mississippi from seaward. His unfamiliarity with the coast, ornight, or fog cheated him of his destination, and the colony was landedfour hundred miles west of it, in a place called Matagorda Bay, inTexas, which then belonged to the Spaniards. Although at the time ofdiscovery he had taken the latitude of that exact spot where he set thepost, he had been unable to determine the longitude; any lagoon might bean 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 themouth of the Mississippi. Whatever may have been his thoughts, theundespairing Norman grappled with his troubles in the usual way. One of his vessels had been captured by the Spanish. Another had beenwrecked in the bay by seamen who were willing to injure him. Thesecontained supplies most needed for the colony. The third sailed away andleft him; and his own little ship, a gift of the king for his use alongthe coast, was sunk by careless men while he was absent searchingnorthward for the Mississippi. 

Many of the colonists fell sick and died. Men turned sullen and tried todesert. Some went hunting and were never seen again. Indians, who darenot openly attack, skulked near and set the prairie on fire; and thatwas 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 acrossa fire sea. But La Salle was wise, and cut the grass close around hispowder and camp. 

[Illustration: La Salle's Map of Texas. ]

Water, plains, trees combined endlessly, like the pieces of akaleidoscope, to confuse him in his search. Tonty was not at hand totake care of the colony while he groped for the lost river. He moved hiswretched people from their camp, with all goods saved off the wreck inthe bay, to a better site for a temporary fort, on rising ground. Thecarpenters proved good for nothing. La Salle himself planned buildingsand marked out mortises on the logs. First a large house roofed withhides, and divided into apartments, was finished to shelter all. Separate houses were afterwards built for the women and girls, andbarracks or rougher cells for the men. A little chapel was finallyadded. And when high-pointed palisades surrounded the whole, La Salle, perhaps thinking of his invincible rock on the Illinois and thefaithfulness of his copper-handed lieutenant guarding it, called thisoutpost also Fort St. Louis. Cannon were mounted at the four corners ofthe large house. As the balls were lost, they were loaded with bulletsin bags. 

Behind, the prairies stretched away to forests. In front rolled the bay, with the restless ever-heaving motion of the Mexican Gulf. A delicioussalty air, like the breath of perpetual spring, blew in, tingling theskin of the sulkiest adventurer with delight in this virgin world. Fierce northers must beat upon the colonists, and the languors of summermust 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 thatthey could not wade without cutting their feet with the shells. Thoughthe alligator pushed his ugly snout and ridgy back out of lagoons, andhorned frogs frightened the children, and the rattlesnake was to beavoided 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 smokethe meat. Even the priests took guns in their hands. Father Membréhad brought some buffalo traditions from the Illinois country. He wasof Father Hennepin's opinion that this wild creature might be trainedto draw the plow, and he had faith that benevolence was concealedbehind its wicked eyes. 

As Father Membré stalked along the prairie with the hunters, his capotetucked up out of his way on its cord, one of the men shot a buffalo andit dropped. The buffaloes rarely fell at once, even when wounded todeath, 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 itscarcass 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 theRécollet. It sent him revolving heels over head. But Father Membré gotup, and, spreading his capote in both hands, danced in front of thebuffalo to head it off from escaping. At that, with a bellow, the shaggycreature charged over him across the prairie, dropping to its knees anddying before the frightened hunters could lift the friar from the ground. 

"Are you hurt, Father?" they all asked, supporting him, and finding itimpossible to keep from laughing as he sat up, with his reverend faceskinned and his capote nearly torn off. 

"Not unto death, " responded Father Membré, brushing grass and dirty hoofprints from his garment. "But it hath been greatly impressed on my mindthat this ox-savage is no fit beast for the plow. Nor will I longercounsel our women to coax the wild cows to a milking. It is well toadapt to our needs the beasts of a country, " said Father Membré, wipingblood from his face. "But this buffalo creature hath disappointed me!"

La Salle was prostrated through the month of November. But by Christmashe was able to set out on a final search from which he did not intendto return until he found the Mississippi. All hands in the fort werebusied on the outfit necessary for the party. Clothes were made of sailsrecovered from one of the wrecked vessels. Eighteen men were to followLa Salle, among them his elder brother, the Abbé Cavelier. Some had onthe remains of garments they had worn in France, and others were dressedin deer or buffalo skins. He had bought five horses of the Indians tocarry the baggage. 

At midnight on Christmas Eve everybody crowded into the small fortresschapel. The priests, celebrating mass, moved before the altar in suchgold-embroidered vestments as they had, and the light of torchesilluminated the rough log walls. Those who were to stay and keep theoutpost, literally lost in the wilderness, were on their knees weeping. Those who were to go knelt also, with the dread of an awful uncertaintyin their minds. The faithful ones foresaw worse than peril from forestsand waters and savages, for La Salle could not leave behind all thevillains with whom he was obliged to serve himself. He alone showed thecomposure of a man who never despairs. If he had positively known thathe was setting out upon a fatal journey, --that he was undertaking hislast march through the wilderness, --the mass lights would still haveshown 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 Worldwith him depended on his success. Whatever lay in the road he had toencounter it. The most splendid lives may progress and end through whatwe call tragedy; but it is better to die in the very stress of achievementthan to stretch a poor existence through a century. The contagion of hishardihood stole out like the Christmas incense and spread through thechapel. 

V. 

FRENCH SETTLEMENTS. 

"It was the establishment of military posts throughout this vast valleythat eventually brought on a life struggle between the English and theFrench, " says a historian. 

At first the only spot of civilization in boundless wilderness wasTonty's little fort on the Illinois. Protected by it, the Indians wenthunting and brought in buffalo skins and meat; their women plantedand reaped maize; children were born; days came and went; autumn hazemade the distances pearly; winter snow lay on the wigwams; men ran onsnowshoes; and papooses shouted on the frozen river. Still no news camefrom 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 eachdirection along the coast. La Salle was at that time groping through amaze of lagoons in Texas. Tonty, with his men, waded swamps to theirnecks, enduring more suffering than he had ever endured in his lifebefore. This was in February of the year 1686. Finding it impossible toreach 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 Indianchief, with directions that it be delivered when the explorer appeared. He also left a couple of men who were willing to wait in the Arkansasvillages to meet La Salle. 

Two years passed before those men brought positive proof of theundespairing Norman's fate. The remnant of the party that started withLa Salle from Fort St. Louis of Texas spent one winter at Fort St. Louisof the Illinois, bringing word that they had left their leader in goodhealth on the coast. The Abbé Cavelier even collected furs in hisbrother's name, and went on to France, carrying his secret with him. 

La Salle had been assassinated on the Trinity River, soon after settingout on his last determined search for the Mississippi. The eighteenthday of March, 1687, some of his brutal voyageurs hid themselves inbushes and shot him. 

So slowly did events move then, and so powerless was man, an atom in thewilderness, that the great-hearted Italian, weeping aloud in rage andgrief, realized that La Salle's bones had been bleaching a year and ahalf before the news of his death reached his lieutenant. It was notknown that La Salle received burial. The wretches who assassinated himthrew him into some brush. It was a satisfaction to Tonty that they allperished miserably afterwards; those who survived quarrels amongthemselves being killed by the Indians. 

The undespairing Norman died instantly, without feeling or admittingdefeat. And he was not defeated. Though his colony--including FatherMembré, who had been so long with him--perished by the hands of theIndians in Texas, in spite of Tonty's second journey to relieve them, his plan of settlements from the great lakes to the mouth of theMississippi became a reality. 

Down from Canada came two of the eleven Le Moyne brothers, D'Ibervilleand Bienville, fine fighting sons of a powerful colonial family, withroyal permission to found near the great river's mouth that city whichhad been La Salle's dream. Fourteen years after La Salle's death, whileD'Iberville was exploring for a site, the old chief, to whom Tonty hadgiven a letter for La Salle, brought it carefully wrapped and deliveredit into the hands of La Salle's more fortunate successor. 

Tonty was associated with Le Moyne D'Iberville in these labors aroundthe Gulf. 

[Illustration: Autograph of Le Moyne D'Iberville. ]

A long peninsula betwixt the Mississippi and Kaskaskia Rivers, knownsince as the American Bottom, lured away Indians from the great town onthe Illinois. The new settlement founded on this peninsula was calledKaskaskia, for one of the tribes. As other posts sprung into existence, Fort St. Louis was less needed. "As early as 1712, " we are told, "landtitles were issued for a common field in Kaskaskia. Traders had alreadyopened a commerce in skins and furs with the remote post of IsleDauphine in Mobile Bay. " Settlements were firmly established. By 1720the luxuries of Europe came into the great tract taken by La Salle inthe 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 hasleft this record of the man with the copper hand:--

"He guided us as far as the Arkansas and gave us much pleasure on theway, winning friendship of some savages and intimidating others who fromjealousy or desire to plunder opposed the voyage; not only doing theduty 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 indevotion. "

On the Chicago portage a little boy, given to the missionary perhapsbecause he was an orphan and the western country offered him the bestchances in life, started eagerly ahead, though he was told to wait. Therest of the party, having goods and canoes to carry from the ChicagoRiver 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 setit afire, though his fate was doubtless hidden in that grass. The partydivided and searched for him, calling and firing guns. Three days theysearched, and daring to wait no longer, for it was November and theriver ready to glaze with ice, they left him to some French people atthe post of Chicago. But the child was not found. He disappeared and noone ever knew what became of him. 

Like this is Henri de Tonty's disappearance from history. The recordsshow him working with Le Moyne D'Iberville and Le Moyne de Bienville tofound New Orleans and Mobile, pushing the enterprises which La Salle hadbegun. He has been blamed with the misbehavior of a relative of his, Alphonse de Tonty, who got into disgrace at the post of Detroit. Littlejustice has been done to the memory of this man, who should not beforgotten in the west. So quietly did he slip out of life that hisburial place is unknown. Some people believe that he came back to theRock long after its buildings were dismantled and it had ceased to beFort St. Louis of the Illinois. Others say he died in Mobile. But it isprobable that both La Salle and Tonty left their bodies to thewilderness which their invincible spirits had conquered. 

After the settlement of Kaskaskia a strong fortress was built sixteenmiles above, on the same side of the Mississippi. The king of Francespent a million crowns strengthening this place, which was called FortChartres. Its massive walls, inclosing four acres, and its buildings andarched gateway were like some medieval stronghold strangely transplantedfrom the Old World. White uniformed troops paraded. A village sprang uparound it. Fort Chartres was the center of government until Kaskaskiabecame the first capital of the Illinois territory. Applications forland had to be made at this post. Indians on the Mississippi, for it wasa little distance from the shore, heard drumbeat and sunset gun, andwere proud of going in and out of its mighty gateway under the whiteflag of France. 

Other villages began on the eastern bank of the river--Cahokia, oppositethe present city of St. Louis, and Prairie du Rocher, nearer Kaskaskia. Ste. Genevieve also was built in what is now the state of Missouri, onland which then was claimed by the Spaniards. There was a Post ofNatchitoches on the Red River, as well as a Post of Washita on theWashita River. Settlements were also founded upon La Fourche and FausseRivière above New Orleans. 

"The finest country we have seen, " wrote one of the adventurers in thosedays, "is all from Chicago to the Tamaroas. It is nothing but prairieand clumps of wood as far as you can see. The Tamaroas are eight leaguesfrom the Illinois. " Chicago was a landing place and portage from thegreat lakes long before a stockade with a blockhouse was built calledFort Dearborn. 

"Monjolly, " wrote the same adventurer, "or Mount Jolliet, is a mound ofearth on the prairie on the right side of the Illinois River as you godown, elevated about thirty feet. The Indians say at the time of thegreat deluge one of their ancestors escaped, and this little mountain ishis canoe which he turned over there. "

La Salle had learned from the Iroquois about the Ohio River. But theregion through which it flowed to the Mississippi remained for a longwhile an unbroken wilderness. The English settlements on their strip ofAtlantic coast, however, and the French settlements in the west, reachedgradually out over this territory and met and grappled. Whichever powergot and kept the mastery of the west would get the mastery of thecontinent. 

The territory of Kentucky, like that of Michigan, was owned by no tribeof Indians. "It was the common hunting and fighting ground of Ohiotribes on the north and Cherokees and Chickasaws on the south. "

There was indeed one exception to the uninhabited state of all that landstretching betwixt the Alleghanies and the Mississippi. Vincennes, nowa town of Indiana, was, after Kaskaskia, the oldest place in the west. This isolated post is said to have been founded by French soldiers andemigrants. Five thousand acres were devoted to the common field. DeVincennes, for whom it was named, was a nephew of Louis Jolliet. Andwhile it is not at all certain that he founded the post, he doubtlesssojourned there in the Indiana country during his roving life. A smallstockade on the site of the town of Fort Wayne is said to have beenbuilt by him. 

French settlements began to extend southward from Lake Erie to the headwaters of the Ohio, like a chain to check the English. Presqu' Isle, nowErie, 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 galleriessurrounding it. Wooden walls were filled and daubed with a solid mass ofwhat was called cat-and-clay, a mixture of mortar and chopped straw orSpanish moss. The chimney was of the same materials, shaped by four longcorner posts, wide apart below, and nearer together at the top. 

As fast as children grew up and married they built their cottagesin their father's yard; and so it went on, until with children andgrandchildren and great-grandchildren, a small village accumulatedaround 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 hisown, 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 ofland called the common pasture was also inclosed for everybody's cattleto graze in. 

Sometimes houses were set facing one court, or center, like a camp, fordefense. But generally the French had little trouble with their savageneighbors, who took very kindly to them. The story of western settlementis not that dreadful story of continual wars with Indians which reddensthe pages of eastern colonies. The French were gay people. They loved todance and hunt and spend their time in amusements. While the serious, stubborn English were grubbing out the foundations of great states onthe Atlantic coast, it must be confessed these happy folks cared littleabout 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 tongueswere eaten, swans, geese, and ducks were always plentiful, and the fishcould not be exhausted. 

On a day in February, people from Kaskaskia hurried over the road whichthen stretched a league to the Mississippi, for the town was on theKaskaskia River bank. There were settlers in blanket capotes, shapedlike friars' frocks, with hoods to draw over their heads. If it hadbeen June instead of February, a blue or red kerchief would have coveredthe men's heads. The dress of an ordinary frontiersman in those daysconsisted 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 thesettlements wooden shoes were worn instead of moccasins, and garments oftexture lighter than buckskin. The women wore short gowns, or long, fulljackets, and petticoats; and their moccasins were like those of squaws, ornamented with beautiful quill-work. Their outer wraps were not unlikethe men's; so a multitude of blanket capotes flocked toward theMississippi bank, which at that time had not been washed away, and rosesteeply above the water. They had all run to see a procession of boatspass by from Fort Chartres. 

A little negro had brought the news that the boats were in sight. Blackslaves were owned by some of the French; and Indian slaves, sold bytheir captors to the settlers, had long been members of thesepatriarchal households. Many of them had left their work to follow theirmasters to the river; the negroes pointing and shouting, the Indiansstanding motionless and silent. 

The sun flecked a broad expanse of water, and down this shining trackrushed a fleet of canoes; white uniforms leading, and brick-coloredheads above dusky-fringed buckskins following close after. This littlearmy waved their hands and fired guns to salute the crowd on shore. Thecrowd all jangled voices in excited talk, no man listening to whatanother said. 

"See you--there are Monsieur Pierre D'Artaguette and the Chevalier DeVincennes 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 thisexpedition! 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 CommandantD'Artaguette when he reaches the Chickasaw country?"

"During his two years at Fort Chartres has Sieur D'Artaguette mademistakes? The expedition will succeed. "

"The saints keep that beautiful boy!--for to look at him, though he isso hardy, Monsieur Pierre D'Artaguette is as handsome as a woman. I haveheard the southern tribes sacrifice their own children to the sun. Thisis a fair company of Christians to venture against such devils. "

The Chickasaws, occupying a tract of country now stretching acrossnorthern Mississippi and western Tennessee, were friendly to the Englishand willing to encroach on the French. They interrupted river trafficand practiced every cruelty on their prisoners. D'Artaguette knewas well as the early explorers that in dealing with savages it is afatal policy to overlook or excuse their ill-behavior. They themselvesbelieved in exact revenge, and despised a foe who did not strike back, their insolence becoming boundless if not curbed. So he had planned withLe Moyne de Bienville a concerted attack on these allies of the English. Bienville, bringing troops up river from New Orleans, was to meet him inthe 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 growsmaller, until it dwindled to nothingness in the distance. 

But in the course of weeks only a few men came back, sent by theChickasaws, to tell about the fate of their leaders. The troops fromNew Orleans did not keep the appointment, arriving too late and thenretreating. D'Artaguette, urged by his Indians, made the attack withsuch force as he had, and his brave array was destroyed. He and theChevalier Vincennes, with Laland, Father Senat, and many others, a circleof noble human torches, perished at the stake. People lamented aloud inKaskaskia and Cahokia streets, and the white flag of France slipped downto half-mast on Fort Chartres. 

This victory made the Chickasaw Indians so bold that scarcely a Frenchconvoy on the river escaped them. There is a story that a young girlreached the gate of Fort Chartres, starving and in rags, from wanderingthrough swamps and woods. She was the last of a family arrived fromFrance, and sought her sister, an officer's wife, in the fort. TheChickasaws had killed every other relative; she, escaping alone, wasready to die of exposure when she saw the flag through the trees. 

But another captain of Fort Chartres, no bolder than young PierreD'Artaguette, but more fortunate, named Neyon de Villiers, twenty yearsafterwards led troops as far east as the present state of Pennsylvania, and helped his brother, Coulon de Villiers, continue the strugglebetwixt French and English by defeating, at Fort Necessity, the Englishcommanded 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 Maynight air carried it a league or more to the fort. All the Pottawatomiesand Wyandots were gathered from their own villages on opposite shoresto the Ottawas on the south bank, facing Isle Cochon. Their women andchildren squatted about huge fires to see the war dance. The riverstrait, so limpidly and transparently blue in daytime, that dipping apailful of it was like dipping a pailful of the sky, scarcely glintedbetwixt darkened woods. 

In the center of an open space, which the camp-fires were built toilluminate, a painted post was driven into the ground, and the warriorsformed a large ring around it. Their moccasined feet kept time to thebooming of the drums. With a flourish of his hatchet around his head, achief leaped into the ring and began to chase an imaginary foe, chantinghis own deeds and those of his forefathers. He was a muscular ratherthan a tall Indian, with high, striking features. His dark skin wascolored by war paint, and he had stripped himself of everything butornaments. Ottawa Indians usually wore brilliant blankets, whileWyandots of Sandusky and Detroit paraded in painted shirts, their headscrowned with feathers, and their leggins tinkling with little bells. The Ojibwas, or Chippewas, of the north carried quivers slung on theirbacks, holding their arrows. 

The dancer in the ring was the Ottawa chief, Pontiac, a man at thattime fifty years old, who had brought eighteen savage nations under hisdominion, so that they obeyed his slightest word. With majestic sweep ofthe limbs he whirled through the pantomime of capturing and scalping anenemy, struck the painted post with his tomahawk, and raised the awfulwar whoop. His young braves stamped and yelled with him. Another leapedinto the ring, sung his deeds, and struck the painted post, warriorafter warrior following, until a wild maze of sinewy figures swam andshrieked around it. Blazing pine knots stuck in the ground helped toshow this maddened whirl, the very opposite of the peaceful, floatingcalumet dance. Boy papooses, watching it, yelled also, their black eyeskindling with full desire to shed blood. 

Perhaps no Indian there, except Pontiac, understood what was beginningwith the war dance on that May night of the year 1763. He had beenlaying his plans all winter, and sending huge black and purple wampumbelts of war, and hatchets dipped in red, to rouse every native tribe. All the Algonquin stock and the Senecas of the Iroquois were united withhim. From the small oven-shaped hut on Isle Cochon, where he lived withhis squaws and children, to Michilimackinac, from Michilimackinac to thelower Mississippi, and from the eastern end of Lake Erie down to theOhio, the messengers of this self-made emperor had secretly carried andunfolded his plan, which was to rise and attack all the English forts onthe same day, and then to destroy all the English settlers, sparing nowhite people but the French. 

Two years before, an English army had come over to Canada and conqueredit. That was a deathblow to French settlements in the middle west. They dared no longer resist English colonists pushing on them fromthe east. All that chain of forts stretching from Lake Erie down to theOhio--Presqu' Isle, Le Boeuf, Venango, Ligonier--had been given up tothe English, as well as western posts--Detroit, Fort Miami, Ouatanon onthe Wabash, and Michilimackinac. The settlements on the Mississippi, however, still displayed the white flag of France. So large was thedominion 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 starvationby holding back the guns and ammunition, on which they had learned todepend, instead of their bows and arrows. For two years they had bornethe rapid spread of English settlements on land which they stillregarded as their own. These intruders were not like the French, whocared nothing about claiming land, and were always ready to hunt ordance with their red brethren. 

All the tribes were, therefore, eager to rise against the English, whomthey wanted to drive back into the sea. Pontiac himself knew this couldnot be done; but he thought it possible, by striking the English fortsall at once, to restore the French power and so get the French to helphim in fighting back their common foe from spreading into the west. 

Pontiac was the only Indian who ever seemed to realize all the dangerswhich threatened his race, or to have military skill for organizingagainst them. His work had been secret, and he had taken pains to appearvery friendly to the garrison of Detroit, who were used to the noise ofIndian yelling and dancing. This fort was the central point of hisoperations, and he intended to take it next morning by surprise. 

Though La Motte Cadillac was the founder of a permanent settlement onthe west shore of Detroit River, it is said that Greysolon du Lhut setup the first palisades there. About a hundred houses stood crowdedtogether within the wooden wall of these tall log pickets, which weretwenty-five feet high. The houses were roofed with bark or thatched withstraw. The streets were mere paths, but a wide road went all around thetown next to the palisades. Detroit was almost square in shape, witha bastion, or fortified projection, at each corner, and a blockhousebuilt over each gate. The river almost washed the front palisades, andtwo schooners usually anchored near to protect the fort and give itcommunication with other points. Besides the homes of settlers, itcontained barracks for soldiers, a council-house, and a little church. 

About a hundred and twenty English soldiers, besides fur traders andCanadian settlers, were in this inclosure, which was called the fort, todistinguish it from the village of French houses up and down the shore. Dwellers outside had their own gardens and orchards, also surrounded bypickets. These French people, who tried to live comfortably among theEnglish, whom they liked no better than the Indians did, raised finepears and apples and made wine of the wild grapes. 

The river, emptying the water of the upper lakes into Lake Erie, wasabout half a mile wide. Sunlight next morning showed this blue straitsparkling from the palisades to the other shore, and trees and gardensmoist with that dewy breath which seems to exhale from fresh-water seas. Indians swarmed early around the fort, pretending that the young menwere that day going to play a game of ball in the fields, while Pontiacand sixty old chiefs came to hold a council with the English. More thana thousand of them lounged about, ready for action. The braves wereblanketed, each carrying a gun with its barrel filed off short enoughto be concealed under his blanket. 

About ten o'clock Pontiac and his chiefs crossed the river in birchcanoes and stalked in Indian file, every man stepping in the tracksof the man before him, to the fort gates. The gates on the water sideusually stood open until evening, for the English, contemptuouslycareless of savages, let squaws and warriors come and go at pleasure. They did not that morning open until Pontiac entered. He found himselfand his chiefs walking betwixt files of armed soldiers. The gates wereshut behind him. 

Pontiac was startled as if by a sting. He saw that some one had betrayedhis 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'sconspiracy; but the most reliable tradition declares it to have been ayoung squaw named Catherine, who could not endure to see friends whomshe loved put to death. 

It flashed through Pontiac's mind that he and his followers were nowreally prisoners. The captain of Detroit was afterwards blamed for notholding the chief when he had him. The tribes could not rush throughthe closed gates at Pontiac's signal, which was to be the lifting of awampum belt upside down, with all its figures reversed. But the cunningsavage put on a look of innocence and inquired:--

"My father, " using the Indian term of respect, "why are so many of youryoung men standing in the street with their guns?"

"They have been ordered out for exercise and discipline, " answered theofficer. 

A slight clash of arms and the rolling of drums were heard by thesurprised tribes waiting in suspense around the palisades. They did notknow whether they would ever see their leader appear again. But he cameout, after going through the form of a council, mortified by his failureto seize the fort, and sulkily crossed the river to his lodge. All hisplans to bring warriors inside the palisades were treated with contemptby the captain of Detroit. Pontiac wanted his braves to smoke thecalumet with his English father. 

"You may come in yourself, " said the officer, "but the crowd you havewith you must remain outside. "

"I want all my young men, " urged Pontiac, "to enjoy the fragrance of thefriendly 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 directionsthe tribes closed around Detroit in a general attack. Though it hadwooden walls, it was well defended. The Indians, after their firstfierce onset, fighting in their own way, behind trees and sheltered bybuildings outside the fort, were able to besiege the place indefinitelywith comparatively small loss to themselves; while the garrison, shutin almost without warning, looked forward to scarcity of provisions. 

All English people caught beyond the walls were instantly murdered. Butthe French settlers were allowed to go about their usual affairs unhurt. Queer traditions have come down from them of the pious burial they gaveto English victims of the Indians. One old man stuck his hands out ofhis grave. The French covered them with earth. But next time they passedthat way they saw the stiff, entreating hands, like pale fungi, againthrust into view. At this the horrified French settlers hurried to theirpriest, who said the neglected burial service over the grave, and so putthe poor Englishman to rest, for his hands protruded no more. 

One of the absent schooners kept for the use of the fort had gone downriver with letters and dispatches. Her crew knew nothing of the siege, and she narrowly escaped capture. A convoy of boats, bringing the usualspring supplies, was taken, leaving Detroit to face famine. Yet itrefused to surrender, and, in spite of Pontiac's rage and his continualinvestment of the place, the red flag of England floated over thatfortress 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 theWabash, a little south of where Lafayette, in the state of Indiana, nowstands; Fort Miami, Presqu' Isle, Le Boeuf, Venango, on the easternborder, and Michilimackinac, on the straits, were all taken by theIndians. 

At Presqu' Isle the twenty-seven soldiers went into the blockhouse ofthe fort and prepared to hold it, lining and making it bullet-proof. 

A blockhouse was built of logs, or very thick timber, and had nowindows, and but one door in the lower story. The upper story projectedseveral feet all around, and had loopholes in the overhanging, floor, through which the men could shoot down. Loopholes were also fixed in theupper 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. Withthe door barred by iron or great beams of wood, and food and ammunitionstored in the lower room, men could ascend a ladder to the second storyof a blockhouse and hold it against great odds, if the besiegers did notsucceed in burning them out. 

Presqu' Isle was at the edge of Lake Erie, and the soldiers broughtin all the water they could store. But the attacking Indians madebreastworks of logs, and shot burning arrows on the shingle roof. All the water barrels were emptied putting out fires. While some mendefended the loopholes, others dug under the floor of the blockhouse andmined 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 theblockhouse kept it from catching the flames by tearing off shinglesfrom 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 theblockhouse. Greatly exhausted, the soldiers held out until next day, when, having surrendered honorably, they were all taken prisoners asthey left the scorched and battered log tower. For savages were suchcapricious and cruel victors that they could rarely be depended upon tokeep faith. Pontiac himself was superior to his people in such matters. If he had been at Presqu' Isle, the garrison would not have been seizedafter surrendering on honorable terms. However, these soldiers were notinstantly massacred, as other prisoners had been in war betwixt Frenchand 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 astockaded fort on the south shore of Michigan, directly across thestrait 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 morethan two hundred years ago. 

Michilimackinac, succeeding St. Ignace, had grown in importance, and wasnow a stockaded fort, having French houses both within and outside it, like Detroit. After Father Marquette's old mission had been abandonedand the buildings burned, another small mission was begun at L'ArbreCroche, not far west of Fort Michilimackinac, such of his Ottawas aswere not scattered being gathered here. The region around also was fullof Chippewas or Ojibwas. 

All these Indians hated the English. Some came to the fort and said to ayoung English trader named Alexander Henry, who arrived after the whiteflag was hauled down and the red one about to be hoisted:--

"Englishman, although you have conquered the French, you have notconquered us. We are not your slaves. These lakes, these woods andmountains 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 aboutDetroit, they had eagerly taken hold of Pontiac's war belt. Themissionary priest was able for a while to restrain the Ottawas. TheChippewas, gathered in from their winter's hunting, determined to strikethe first blow. 

On the fourth day of June, which was the English king's birthday, theycame 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 someSac Indians. The fortress gates stood open. The day was very warm anddiscipline was relaxed. Nobody noticed that squaws, flocking inside thefort, had tomahawks and scalping knives hidden under their blankets, though a few Englishmen afterward remembered that the squaws werestrangely huddled in wrappings on a day hot for that climate. 

The young English trader, Alexander Henry, has left a careful account ofthe massacre at Fort Michilimackinac. He did not go out to see the ballgame, because he had important letters to write and send by a canoe juststarting to Canada. Officers and men, believing the red tribes friendly, lounged about unarmed. Whitewashed French houses shone in the sun, andthe surge of the straits sounded peacefully on the beach. Nobody coulddream that when the shouting Indians drove the ball back from thefarthest 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 thesquaws, cutting down and scalping Englishmen. He caught his own gun fromits rack, expecting to hear the drum beat to arms. But the surprisedgarrison were unable even to sound an alarm. 

Seeing that not a Frenchman was touched, Henry slipped into the house ofhis next neighbor, a Canadian named Langlade. The whole family were atthe front windows, looking at the horrible sights in the fort; but anIndian slave, a Pani, or Pawnee woman, beckoned to him and hid him inthe attic, locking the door and carrying away the key. 

The attic probably had one or two of those tunnel-like dormer windowsbuilt in the curving roof of all French houses. Henry found a placewhere he could look out. He saw his countrymen slaughtered without beingable to help them, and it was like a frightful nightmare from whichthere was to be no awakening. Presently the cry rose:--

"All is finished!"

Then the Indians crowded into Langlade's house and inquired whether anyEnglishmen were hid there. So thin was the attic floor of planks laidacross joists, that Henry could hear every word. 

"I cannot say, " answered the Frenchman. "You may examine foryourselves. "

Henry looked around the attic for some place to hide in. Moccasined feetwere already coming upstairs. Savage hands shook the attic door, andimpatient guttural voices demanded the key. While some one went for thekey, Henry crept into a kind of tunnel made by a heap of birch-barkvessels, used in the maple-sugar season. The door was opening before hecould draw himself quite out of sight, and though the pile was in a darkcorner, he dreaded displacing some of the birch troughs and making anoise. 

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 thedusk; and while searching they told Monsieur Langlade how manyEnglishmen 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 hestretched himself on it, so worn out by what he had seen and enduredthat he fell asleep. 

He was roused by the door opening again. Madame Langlade came in, andshe was surprised and frightened at finding him. It was nearly night anda fierce summer rain beat upon the roof, dripping through cracks of theheat-dried bark. Madame Langlade had come to stop a leak. She told Henrythat all the English except himself were killed, but she hoped he wouldescape. She brought him some water to drink. 

As darkness came on, he lay thinking of his desperate state. He was fourhundred miles from Detroit, which he did not then know was besieged, and with all his stores captured or destroyed by the Indians, he had noprovisions. He could not stay where he was, and if he ventured out, thefirst red man who met him would kill him. 

By morning the Indians came to the house inquiring for Henry, whom theyhad missed. Madame Langlade was in such fear that they might kill herchildren if they found Henry sheltered in the house, that she told herhusband where he was and begged to have him given up. This the Frenchmanat first refused to do; but he finally led the Indians again to theattic. 

Henry stood up, expecting to die. 

The Indians were all partially drunk and had satisfied themselves withslaughter. One of them seized Henry by the collar and lifted a knife toplunge into his breast. White man and red man looked intently at eachother, and the savage, perhaps moved by the fearless despair in theyoung Englishman's eyes, concluded to take him prisoner. Henry beganto think he could not be killed. 

He found that the captain and lieutenant of Michilimackinac were alsoalive and prisoners like himself. The missionary priest was doing allhe could to restrain his maddened flock. At a council held betweenChippewas and Ottawas, Henry was bought with presents by a Chippewachief named Wawatam, who loved him, and who had been absent the day ofthe attack Wawatam put Henry in his canoe, carried him across the straitto Michilimackinac Island, and hid him in a cave, which is now calledSkull Rock by the islanders, because Henry found ancient skulls and bonesin the bottom of it. As the island was held sacred by the Indians, thiswas probably one of their old sepulchres. Its dome top is smothered in atangle of evergreens and brush. There is a low, triangular entrance, andthe hollow inside is shaped like an elbow. More than one island boy hassince 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 andreturned 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, namedDavid Owen, came back from adoption and marriage into a tribe, bringingthe scalps of his squaw wife and her friends. 

Through the entire summer Pontiac was successful in everything exceptthe taking of Detroit. He besieged it from May until October. Withautumn 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 ofthe Mississippi. His cause was lost. He could band unstable warriorstogether for a common good, but he could not control politics in Europe, nor defend a people given up by their sovereign, against the solidlyadvancing English race. 

[Illustration: North America at Close of French Wars, 1763. ]

But he was unwilling to own himself defeated while the French flag wavedover a foot of American ground. This clever Indian, needing supplies tocarry on his war, used civilized methods to get them on credit. He gavepromissory notes written on birch bark, signed with his own totem, ortribe-mark--a picture of the otter. These notes were faithfully paid. 

When he saw his struggle becoming hopeless eastward, he drew off to theIllinois settlements to fight back the English from taking possession ofFort Chartres, the last French post. They might come up the Mississippifrom New Orleans, or they might come down the Ohio. The Iroquois hadalways called the Mississippi the Ohio, considering that river whichrose near their own country the great river, and the northern branchmerely 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 prairiegrass! 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 hisforces around Fort Chartres, cherishing it and urging the last Frenchcommandant, St. Ange de Bellerive, to take up arms with him, until thatpoor captain, tormented by the savage mob, and only holding the placeuntil its English owners received it, was ready to march out with hisfew soldiers and abandon it. 

It is told that while Pontiac was leading his forlorn hope, he made hisconquerors ridiculous. Major Loftus with a detachment of troops came upthe Mississippi to take possession according to treaty. Pontiac turnedhim back. Captain Pittman came up the river. Pontiac turned him back. Captain Morris started from Detroit, and Pontiac squatted defiantly inhis way. Lieutenant Frazer descended the Ohio. Pontiac caught him andshipped him to New Orleans by canoe. Captain Croghan was also stoppednear Detroit. Both French and Spanish people roared with laughter atthe many failures of the coming race to seize what had so easily beenobtained by treaty. 

Two years and a half passed between Pontiac's attack on Detroit andthe formal surrender of Fort Chartres. The great war chief's heart, witha gradual breaking, finally yielded before the steadily advancing andall-conquering people that were to dominate this continent. 

The second day of winter, late in the afternoon, Pontiac went intothe fort unattended by any warrior, and without a word sat down nearSt. Ange de Bellerive in the officers' quarters. Both veteran soldierand old chief knew that Major Farmar, with a large body of troops, was almost in sight of Fort Chartres, coming from New Orleans. Perhapsbefore the low winter sun was out of sight, cannon mounted on one ofthe bastions would have to salute the new commandant. Sentinels onthe mound of Fort Chartres could see a frosty valley, reaching to theMississippi, glinting in the distance. That alluvial stretch was, inthe 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 byits conquerors, to sink, piecemeal, a noble and massive ruin. Thedome-shaped powder house and stone quarters would be put to ignobleuses, and forest trees, spreading the spice of walnut fragrance, or thedense shadow of oaks, would grow through the very room where St. Angeand 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 tohim. He wanted to have it over and to cross the Mississippi, to a townrecently founded northward on the west shore, where many French settlershad collected, called St. Louis. This was then considered Spanishground. But if the French king deserted his American colonies, whyshould 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 calumettogether, and we have fought battles together against misguided Indiansand the English dogs. "

St. Ange de Bellerive looked at the dejected chief and thought of LeMoyne de Bienville, now an old man living in France, who was said tohave wept and implored King Louis on his knees not to give up to theEnglish that rich western domain which Marquette and Jolliet and LaSalle and Tonty and many another Frenchman had suffered to gain, andto 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 hiswampum 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 theinheritance of his fathers to an invader he hated. His race could notlive under the civilization of the Anglo-Saxon. He would have struckout to the remotest wilderness, had he foreseen to what a burial placehis continual clinging to the French would bring him. For Pontiac wasassassinated 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 deadchief's ears could hear, he would catch also the sound of the belovedFrench tongue lingering there. 

A cannon thundered from one of the bastions. St. Ange stood up, andPontiac stood up with him. 

"The English are in sight, " said St. Ange de Bellerive. "That salute isthe signal for the flag of France to be lowered on Fort Chartres. "

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