John Carl Parish

“ As they drew near a village of Michigamea Indians, whose lodges were almost at the water’s edge, the voyagers heard the savage yells of warriors inciting one another to an attack. Soon they swarmed along the shore with bows and arrows, and with hatchets and great war clubs. In vain did Marquette hold up the calumet of peace. Downstream the Indians climbed into their long dugouts and pushed up to attack the strangers from below; while upstream other young warriors launched their wooden canoes and swept down the river with hoarse cries of battle. ”

“ The young Boisrondet and Renault are in the lead, their hair flowing back in their speed, their set faces full of the lust of battle and revenge. The twisting, howling figures of five hundred Indians hurl themselves upon the ranks of the enemy. Then like fiends they fight. The report of the Iroquois guns is like the cracking of twigs in the forest to the new-found courage of the Illinois. Their war cries rise above it sharp and shrill. Swift arrows fly like driving hail. Heavy war clubs crash on Iroquois shield or on painted head and body. ”

“ Let us picture in imagination the history of the Great Valley of the Mississippi as a splendid drama enacted upon a giant stage which reaches from the Alleghanies to the Rockies and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and through which the Father of Waters sweeps majestically. Let us people this stage with real men and women—picturesque red men and no less interesting white men, Indians, Spaniards, Frenchmen, Englishmen, explorers, warriors, priests, voyageurs, coureurs de bois; fur traders, and settlers. ”

“ THE IROQUOIS COME The level stretch of land along the north bank of the Illinois River, where lay the lodges of the Kaskaskias, swarmed with hundreds of Indian braves who were eager to be off into the woods and across the plains. What was so stupid as life among the lodges with the women and old men when the far-off wilds called them, when streams might carry their pirogues into lands where their enemies lay sleeping and unwatchful, when the trails to north and south and east and west might lead them into woods and fields where bountiful game would fall before their arrows? ”

“ If the village had been in a turmoil before, now it was in a fury. Their worst fears, then, had come true: the French were all traitors. Even Tonty had deceived them and had his own reasons for trying to get out of the village before the Iroquois came. Like angry bees the Indians swarmed to the lodge of Tonty. “Now,” said one of their chiefs, “we know you for a friend of the Iroquois. The winds of rumor have told us no lies. We are lost, for the enemy are too many for us and you and the Frenchmen are their friends.”
In the midst of the furious, gesticulating crowd of warriors Tonty stood calm. ”

“ Instantly the whole village awoke to intense excitement. Women dropped their work by the fireside; old men put away their long-stemmed pipes and leaped like young braves to the doors of the lodges; while in the fields young girls stood straight to listen. Again came the cry, but nearer now and as of many voices. From every lodge by the side of the river and on the hill came pouring the red-skinned villagers, their straight, black hair glistening in the sunlight. From the fields of corn and squashes and out from among the bean-vines came lithe maidens and sturdy Indian women ”

“ Anthony, a devout Sioux climbed, weeping and lamenting bitterly as he fastened to the branches a fine beaver skin. On the inside the skin had been carefully dressed and painted white, and it was decorated with the quills of porcupine. And while he offered this sacrifice to the spirit of the Falls, he cried out in a loud voice:—
“Thou who art a spirit, grant that our nation may pass here quietly without accident, may kill buffalo in abundance, conquer our enemies and bring in slaves, some of whom we will put to death before thee. The Foxes have killed our kindred. ”

“ Tonty paid small heed to their silence; for in his mind was the one great thought that La Salle was alive and might reach the fort at any time. Four years before, his beloved leader had gone from the fort on the Illinois to Canada and across to France; and three years before, he had sailed from France for the mouth of the Mississippi. In all that time, alternating between hope and the gloomy despair which lately had so often fallen upon his soul, Tonty had waited hoping each day for news from his lost chief. ”

“ The year seemed truly a calamitous one for the Indians. It was in those trying days that some Illinois were gathered in one of the long-roofed lodges, where on a bed made soft by the skins of buffalo lay a man close unto death. About him stood the men upon whom the nation relied to heal the sick and cure the wounded, to drive away the evil spirits, and to conjure the good spirits—the mysterious medicine men. They had worked long with the man who lay upon the bed, for he was a chief great in the councils of the Illinois nation. ”

“ THE GATHERING OF THE TRIBES On the south bank of the river Illinois, a mile or more above the plain where lay the deserted village of the Kaskaskias, a great rock rose sheer from the water to a height of over a hundred feet. Three sides of the rock were like the walls of a mediæval castle. At the fourth side by a rugged pathway one might climb laboriously from behind to the level top where oaks and cedars grew. ”

“ Such was the vision that rose before La Salle day and night—a vision of the long river valley held together by a chain of forts and depots for the fur trade, of friendly Indians coming with their canoes laden with furs to exchange with the French for merchandise, of French settlements growing up in the wilderness, of a great post at the mouth of the river, and of swift-sailing ships plying between the Gulf and far-away France. ”

“ In the wild reaches of the Great Valley there remained little trace of the last expedition of La Salle to found a colony at the foot of what Joutel had come to call the fatal river. Up and down the broad highway that ran through the valley from north to south, red men pushed their wooden dugouts or bark canoes. With moccasined feet they trailed the deer through the woods and followed the track of the shaggy beasts of the plains. And at break of day beside the enemy’s camp they sent up the cry of war quite as they and their fathers had done for many hundred years. ”

“ From in front of the Peoria lodges on the banks of the Iowa River, a slender trail slipped off across the prairies through two leagues of sunshine over a country fair to see, and came at length to the west bank of the Mississippi. But on this summer day no Indian traveled the pathway that led from the village. There was no one in the streets of the Indian town, and no movement to be seen save the slow rising of smoke from the tops of the three hundred lodges which dotted the hill like so many long arbors, with rounded roofs made waterproof by layers of plaited rush mats. ”

“ Handing his gun to a friend, he walks across the intervening space attended by a single Illinois. The Indians watch him closely as he nears the foe. There is a sharp, deadly volley from the Iroquois. Tonty stops, and sending back the Indian who is with him, goes on alone. Arrow and ball fly about him, but he reaches the lines unscathed. Iroquois warriors swallow him from the view of the anxious Illinois. Only the Indian who has crossed half the open space with him sees the knife of an Iroquois flash out and bury itself in the side of the white chief. ”

“ The woods along the river were full of game; and in the quiet water of the Illinois, fish by the hundred swam to and fro, an easy target for the swift-winged arrow of the Indian youth. Far back on the plains roamed great herds of buffalo, which afforded both sport and food for the Indians. When fall came, the Indians would surround a herd of buffalo and then set fire to the prairie, taking care to leave an open space by which the frightened animals could escape. As the big animals passed out through this break in the circle of fire, they were easily shot by the Indian hunters. ”

“ The flames of the camp-fires cast the shadows of the dancers across the open space and against the walls of the lodges like ghostly, ever-changing spirits; and into the night air rose chants, rhythmic and uncanny. All the long night through the Indians kept up their rites to work themselves into a proper spirit for the attack upon the Iroquois—a fight against odds wherein they needed the help of every manitou or spirit that could aid them.
Gradually the fires die out as in the east a faint light begins to spread. ”

“ Among these brawny men was a muscular young lad from Paris named Renault, L’Espérance, a brave-hearted young servant of La Salle, and Boisrondet, a man of higher birth than the rest and a special friend of Tonty. But it was not of these men that the Peorias talked most to the bands of hunters and warriors returning now to the village—it was of La Salle, the white chief, who had left the fort, and of Tonty, the man of mystery, who remained in charge of the garrison. ”

“ Faint whisperings reached them of white-faced men who brought from across the sea weapons that roared like the thunder and smote their victims like bolts of lightning. Their ancient enemies, the Iroquois, bought these weapons with furs and carried their ravages upon the Western tribes with increased deadliness. Then they learned that the white men themselves were beginning to appear on the Great Lakes—first at the eastern end, but finally on the shores of Lake Superior and the Lake of the Illinois. ”

“ For six days they besieged the wilderness castle, but all in vain. At length they made a few captives from the neighboring tribes and tried to creep off. But the bands of Shawnees and Illinois and Miamis had been waiting their turn, and now hard upon the heels of the retreating foe they pushed with eager weapons. They killed many and brought their scalps home in triumph to the villages around the rock. Fort St. Louis had had its baptism of fire—and the fire had only hardened the courage of the garrison and the Indians of the colony. ”

“ At the same time he added that if they could not let him have food for his men, he would go down the river to their neighbors, the Osages, and there set up the forge which he had brought to mend their knives and hatchets and make them new tools for the warpath and the chase.
Behind the impassive faces of Nicanopé, Omawha, and other chiefs were minds alive to a new situation. This man was not a mere black robe, come among them to preach and to baptize their dying; nor was he a lone trader, a coureur de bois passing by in his bold profession of trapping, hunting, and trading furs. ”

“ Seldom do Indians in council interrupt a speaker, but as the white leader promised to take up the name and life of their dead chief the whole gathering broke into cries of rejoicing and praise. When a son was lost from an Indian family the sorrowing parents often adopted in his place a captive from another nation. So now it did not seem strange that in place of their lamented chief they should take to their hearts and homes this white chief, and call him by the old name Ouabicolcata, and love him as they loved the man who was dead.
La Salle’s men now brought three immense kettles. ”

“ At last the older men, having caught sight of the upraised calumet of peace, held back the young braves with their too impetuous weapons.
In a few moments the Sioux had reached the canoe of the white men. Some of the Indians leaped into the water and some on shore, completely surrounding the three strangers. Quickly the canoes all came to land, and Aquipaguetin and his fellow-chiefs made the prisoners sit down upon skins on the river bank. They were Frenchmen—two bearded traders and a big gray-robed friar—and around them in circles the Indians sat. True, the Sioux had seized the pipe of peace ”