1680, 1681.
HENNEPIN AMONG THE SIOUX.
Signs of Danger.--Adoption.--Hennepin and his Indian
Relatives.--The Hunting Party.--The Sioux Camp.--Falls of St.
Anthony.--A Vagabond Friar: his Adventures on the
Mississippi.--Greysolon du Lhut.--Return to Civilization.
As Hennepin entered the village, he beheld a sight which caused him to
invoke Saint Anthony of Padua. In front of the lodges were certain
stakes, to which were attached bundles of straw, intended, as he
supposed, for burning him and his friends alive. His concern was
redoubled when he saw the condition of the Picard Du Gay, whose hair and
face had been painted with divers colors, and whose head was decorated
with a tuft of white feathers. In this guise he was entering the
village, followed by a crowd of Sioux, who compelled him to sing and
keep time to his own music by rattling a dried gourd containing a number
of pebbles. The omens, indeed, were exceedingly threatening; for
treatment like this was usually followed by the speedy immolation of the
captive. Hennepin ascribes it to the effect of his invocations, that,
being led into one of the lodges, among a throng of staring squaws and
children, he and his companions were seated on the ground, and presented
with large dishes of birch-bark, containing a mess of wild rice boiled
with dried whortleberries,--a repast which he declares to have been the
best that had fallen to his lot since the day of his captivity.[212]
[Sidenote: THE SIOUX.]
This soothed his fears; but, as he allayed his famished appetite, he
listened with anxious interest to the vehement jargon of the chiefs and
warriors, who were disputing among themselves to whom the three captives
should respectively belong; for it seems that, as far as related to
them, the question of distribution had not yet been definitely settled.
The debate ended in the assigning of Hennepin to his old enemy
Aquipaguetin, who, however, far from persisting in his evil designs,
adopted him on the spot as his son. The three companions must now part
company. Du Gay, not yet quite reassured of his safety, hastened to
confess himself to Hennepin; but Accau proved refractory, and refused
the offices of religion, which did not prevent the friar from embracing
them both, as he says, with an extreme tenderness. Tired as he was, he
was forced to set out with his self-styled father to his village, which
was fortunately not far off. An unpleasant walk of a few miles through
woods and marshes brought them to the borders of a sheet of water,
apparently Lake Buade, where five of Aquipaguetin's wives received the
party in three canoes, and ferried them to an island on which the
village stood.
At the entrance of the chief's lodge, Hennepin was met by a decrepit old
Indian, withered with age, who offered him the peace-pipe, and placed
him on a bear-skin which was spread by the fire. Here, to relieve his
fatigue,--for he was well-nigh spent,--a small boy anointed his limbs
with the fat of a wild-cat, supposed to be sovereign in these cases by
reason of the great agility of that animal. His new father gave him a
bark-platter of fish, covered him with a buffalo-robe, and showed him
six or seven of his wives, who were thenceforth, he was told, to regard
him as a son. The chief's household was numerous; and his allies and
relatives formed a considerable clan, of which the missionary found
himself an involuntary member. He was scandalized when he saw one of his
adopted brothers carrying on his back the bones of a deceased friend,
wrapped in the chasuble of brocade which they had taken with other
vestments from his box.
[Sidenote: HENNEPIN AS A MISSIONARY.]
Seeing their new relative so enfeebled that he could scarcely stand, the
Indians made for him one of their sweating baths,[213] where they
immersed him in steam three times a week,--a process from which he
thinks he derived great benefit. His strength gradually returned, in
spite of his meagre fare; for there was a dearth of food, and the squaws
were less attentive to his wants than to those of their children. They
respected him, however, as a person endowed with occult powers, and
stood in no little awe of a pocket compass which he had with him, as
well as of a small metal pot with feet moulded after the face of a lion.
This last seemed in their eyes a "medicine" of the most formidable
nature, and they would not touch it without first wrapping it in a
beaver-skin. For the rest, Hennepin made himself useful in various ways.
He shaved the heads of the children, as was the custom of the tribe;
bled certain asthmatic persons, and dosed others with orvietan, the
famous panacea of his time, of which he had brought with him a good
supply. With respect to his missionary functions, he seems to have given
himself little trouble, unless his attempt to make a Sioux vocabulary is
to be regarded as preparatory to a future apostleship. "I could gain
nothing over them," he says, "in the way of their salvation, by reason
of their natural stupidity." Nevertheless, on one occasion, he baptized
a sick child, naming it Antoinette in honor of Saint Anthony of Padua.
It seemed to revive after the rite, but soon relapsed and presently
died, "which," he writes, "gave me great joy and satisfaction." In this
he was like the Jesuits, who could find nothing but consolation in the
death of a newly baptized infant, since it was thus assured of a
paradise which, had it lived, it would probably have forfeited by
sharing in the superstitions of its parents.
With respect to Hennepin and his Indian father, there seems to have been
little love on either side; but Ouasicoudé, the principal chief of the
Sioux of this region, was the fast friend of the three white men. He was
angry that they had been robbed, which he had been unable to prevent, as
the Sioux had no laws, and their chiefs little power; but he spoke his
mind freely, and told Aquipaguetin and the rest, in full council, that
they were like a dog who steals a piece of meat from a dish and runs
away with it. When Hennepin complained of hunger, the Indians had always
promised him that early in the summer he should go with them on a
buffalo hunt, and have food in abundance. The time at length came, and
the inhabitants of all the neighboring villages prepared for departure.
To each band was assigned its special hunting-ground, and he was
expected to accompany his Indian father. To this he demurred; for he
feared lest Aquipaguetin, angry at the words of the great chief, might
take this opportunity to revenge the insult put upon him. He therefore
gave out that he expected a party of "Spirits"--that is to say,
Frenchmen--to meet him at the mouth of the Wisconsin, bringing a supply
of goods for the Indians; and he declares that La Salle had in fact
promised to send traders to that place. Be this as it may, the Indians
believed him; and, true or false, the assertion, as will be seen,
answered the purpose for which it was made.
[Sidenote: CAMP OF SAVAGES.]
The Indians set out in a body to the number of two hundred and fifty
warriors, with their women and children. The three Frenchmen, who though
in different villages had occasionally met during the two months of
their captivity, were all of the party. They descended Rum River, which
forms the outlet of Mille Lac, and which is called the St. Francis by
Hennepin. None of the Indians had offered to give him passage; and,
fearing lest he should be abandoned, he stood on the bank, hailing the
passing canoes and begging to be taken in. Accau and Du Gay presently
appeared, paddling a small canoe which the Indians had given them; but
they would not listen to the missionary's call, and Accau, who had no
love for him, cried out that he had paddled him long enough already. Two
Indians, however, took pity on him, and brought him to the place of
encampment, where Du Gay tried to excuse himself for his conduct; but
Accau was sullen, and kept aloof.
After reaching the Mississippi, the whole party encamped together
opposite to the mouth of Rum River, pitching their tents of skin, or
building their bark-huts, on the slope of a hill by the side of the
water. It was a wild scene, this camp of savages among whom as yet no
traders had come and no handiwork of civilization had found its
way,--the tall warriors, some nearly naked, some wrapped in
buffalo-robes, and some in shirts of dressed deer-skin fringed with hair
and embroidered with dyed porcupine quills, war-clubs of stone in their
hands, and quivers at their backs filled with stone-headed arrows; the
squaws, cutting smoke-dried meat with knives of flint, and boiling it in
rude earthen pots of their own making, driving away, meanwhile, with
shrill cries, the troops of lean dogs, which disputed the meal with a
crew of hungry children. The whole camp, indeed, was threatened with
starvation. The three white men could get no food but unripe
berries,--from the effects of which Hennepin thinks they might all have
died, but for timely doses of his orvietan.
[Sidenote: FALLS OF ST. ANTHONY.]
Being tired of the Indians, he became anxious to set out for the
Wisconsin to find the party of Frenchmen, real or imaginary, who were to
meet him at that place. That he was permitted to do so was due to the
influence of the great chief Ouasicoudé, who always befriended him, and
who had soundly berated his two companions for refusing him a seat in
their canoe. Du Gay wished to go with him; but Accau, who liked the
Indian life as much as he disliked Hennepin, preferred to remain with
the hunters. A small birch-canoe was given to the two adventurers,
together with an earthen pot; and they had also between them a gun, a
knife, and a robe of beaver-skin. Thus equipped, they began their
journey, and soon approached the Falls of St. Anthony, so named by
Hennepin in honor of the inevitable Saint Anthony of Padua.[214] As they
were carrying their canoe by the cataract, they saw five or six Indians,
who had gone before, and one of whom had climbed into an oak-tree beside
the principal fall, whence in a loud and lamentable voice he was
haranguing the spirit of the waters, as a sacrifice to whom he had just
hung a robe of beaver-skin among the branches.[215] Their attention was
soon engrossed by another object. Looking over the edge of the cliff
which overhung the river below the falls, Hennepin saw a snake, which,
as he avers, was six feet long,[216] writhing upward towards the holes
of the swallows in the face of the precipice, in order to devour their
young. He pointed him out to Du Gay, and they pelted him with stones
till he fell into the river, but not before his contortions and the
darting of his forked tongue had so affected the Picard's imagination
that he was haunted that night with a terrific incubus.
[Sidenote: ADVENTURES.]
They paddled sixty leagues down the river in the heats of July, and
killed no large game but a single deer, the meat of which soon spoiled.
Their main resource was the turtles, whose shyness and watchfulness
caused them frequent disappointments and many involuntary fasts. They
once captured one of more than common size; and, as they were
endeavoring to cut off his head, he was near avenging himself by
snapping off Hennepin's finger. There was a herd of buffalo in sight on
the neighboring prairie; and Du Gay went with his gun in pursuit of
them, leaving the turtle in Hennepin's custody. Scarcely was he gone
when the friar, raising his eyes, saw that their canoe, which they had
left at the edge of the water, had floated out into the current. Hastily
turning the turtle on his back, he covered him with his habit of St.
Francis, on which, for greater security, he laid a number of stones, and
then, being a good swimmer, struck out in pursuit of the canoe, which
he at length overtook. Finding that it would overset if he tried to
climb into it, he pushed it before him to the shore, and then paddled
towards the place, at some distance above, where he had left the turtle.
He had no sooner reached it than he heard a strange sound, and beheld a
long file of buffalo--bulls, cows, and calves--entering the water not
far off, to cross to the western bank. Having no gun, as became his
apostolic vocation, he shouted to Du Gay, who presently appeared,
running in all haste, and they both paddled in pursuit of the game. Du
Gay aimed at a young cow, and shot her in the head. She fell in shallow
water near an island, where some of the herd had landed; and being
unable to drag her out, they waded into the water and butchered her
where she lay. It was forty-eight hours since they had tasted food.
Hennepin made a fire, while Du Gay cut up the meat. They feasted so
bountifully that they both fell ill, and were forced to remain two days
on the island, taking doses of orvietan, before they were able to resume
their journey.
Apparently they were not sufficiently versed in woodcraft to smoke the
meat of the cow; and the hot sun soon robbed them of it. They had a few
fishhooks, but were not always successful in the use of them. On one
occasion, being nearly famished, they set their line, and lay watching
it, uttering prayers in turn. Suddenly, there was a great turmoil in the
water. Du Gay ran to the line, and, with the help of Hennepin, drew in
two large cat-fish.[217] The eagles, or fish-hawks, now and then dropped
a newly caught fish, of which they gladly took possession; and once they
found a purveyor in an otter which they saw by the bank, devouring some
object of an appearance so wonderful that Du Gay cried out that he had a
devil between his paws. They scared him from his prey, which proved to
be a spade-fish, or, as Hennepin correctly describes it, a species of
sturgeon, with a bony projection from his snout in the shape of a
paddle. They broke their fast upon him, undeterred by this eccentric
appendage.
[Sidenote: THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI.]
If Hennepin had had an eye for scenery, he would have found in these his
vagabond rovings wherewith to console himself in some measure for his
frequent fasts. The young Mississippi, fresh from its northern springs,
unstained as yet by unhallowed union with the riotous Missouri, flowed
calmly on its way amid strange and unique beauties,--a wilderness,
clothed with velvet grass; forest-shadowed valleys; lofty heights, whose
smooth slopes seemed levelled with the scythe; domes and pinnacles,
ramparts and ruined towers, the work of no human hand. The canoe of the
voyagers, borne on the tranquil current, glided in the shade of gray
crags festooned with honeysuckles; by trees mantled with wild
grape-vines; dells bright with the flowers of the white euphorbia, the
blue gentian, and the purple balm; and matted forests, where the red
squirrels leaped and chattered. They passed the great cliff whence the
Indian maiden threw herself in her despair;[218] and Lake Pepin lay
before them, slumbering in the July sun,--the far-reaching sheets of
sparkling water, the woody slopes, the tower-like crags, the grassy
heights basking in sunlight or shadowed by the passing cloud; all the
fair outline of its graceful scenery, the finished and polished
master-work of Nature. And when at evening they made their bivouac fire
and drew up their canoe, while dim, sultry clouds veiled the west, and
the flashes of the silent heat-lightning gleamed on the leaden water,
they could listen, as they smoked their pipes, to the mournful cry of
the whippoorwills and the quavering scream of the owls.
Other thoughts than the study of the picturesque occupied the mind of
Hennepin when one day he saw his Indian father, Aquipaguetin, whom he
had supposed five hundred miles distant, descending the river with ten
warriors in canoes. He was eager to be the first to meet the traders,
who, as Hennepin had given out, were to come with their goods to the
mouth of the Wisconsin. The two travellers trembled for the
consequences of this encounter; but the chief, after a short colloquy,
passed on his way. In three days he returned in ill-humor, having found
no traders at the appointed spot. The Picard was absent at the time,
looking for game; and Hennepin was sitting under the shade of his
blanket, which he had stretched on forked sticks to protect him from the
sun, when he saw his adopted father approaching with a threatening look,
and a war-club in his hand. He attempted no violence, however, but
suffered his wrath to exhale in a severe scolding, after which he
resumed his course up the river with his warriors.
If Hennepin, as he avers, really expected a party of traders at the
Wisconsin, the course he now took is sufficiently explicable. If he did
not expect them, his obvious course was to rejoin Tonty on the Illinois,
for which he seems to have had no inclination; or to return to Canada by
way of the Wisconsin,--an attempt which involved the risk of starvation,
as the two travellers had but ten charges of powder left. Assuming,
then, his hope of the traders to have been real, he and Du Gay resolved,
in the mean time, to join a large body of Sioux hunters, who, as
Aquipaguetin had told them, were on a stream which he calls Bull River,
now the Chippeway, entering the Mississippi near Lake Pepin. By so
doing, they would gain a supply of food, and save themselves from the
danger of encountering parties of roving warriors.
[Sidenote: HE REJOINS THE INDIANS.]
They found this band, among whom was their companion Accau, and followed
them on a grand hunt along the borders of the Mississippi. Du Gay was
separated for a time from Hennepin, who was placed in a canoe with a
withered squaw more than eighty years old. In spite of her age, she
handled her paddle with great address, and used it vigorously, as
occasion required, to repress the gambols of three children, who, to
Hennepin's annoyance, occupied the middle of the canoe. The hunt was
successful. The Sioux warriors, active as deer, chased the buffalo on
foot with their stone-headed arrows, on the plains behind the heights
that bordered the river; while the old men stood sentinels at the top,
watching for the approach of enemies. One day an alarm was given. The
warriors rushed towards the supposed point of danger, but found nothing
more formidable than two squaws of their own nation, who brought strange
news. A war-party of Sioux, they said, had gone towards Lake Superior,
and had met by the way five "Spirits;" that is to say, five Europeans.
Hennepin was full of curiosity to learn who the strangers might be; and
they, on their part, were said to have shown great anxiety to know the
nationality of the three white men who, as they were told, were on the
river. The hunt was over; and the hunters, with Hennepin and his
companion, were on their way northward to their towns, when they met the
five "Spirits" at some distance below the Falls of St. Anthony. They
proved to be Daniel Greysolon du Lhut, with four well-armed Frenchmen.
[Sidenote: DE LHUT'S EXPLORATIONS.]
This bold and enterprising man, stigmatized by the Intendant Duchesneau
as a leader of _coureurs de bois_, was a cousin of Tonty, born at Lyons.
He belonged to that caste of the lesser nobles whose name was legion,
and whose admirable military qualities shone forth so conspicuously in
the wars of Louis XIV. Though his enterprises were independent of those
of La Salle, they were at this time carried on in connection with Count
Frontenac and certain merchants in his interest, of whom Du Lhut's
uncle, Patron, was one; while Louvigny, his brother-in-law, was in
alliance with the governor, and was an officer of his guard. Here, then,
was a kind of family league, countenanced by Frontenac, and acting
conjointly with him, in order, if the angry letters of the intendant are
to be believed, to reap a clandestine profit under the shadow of the
governor's authority, and in violation of the royal ordinances. The
rudest part of the work fell to the share of Du Lhut, who with a
persistent hardihood, not surpassed perhaps even by La Salle, was
continually in the forest, in the Indian towns, or in remote wilderness
outposts planted by himself, exploring, trading, fighting, ruling
lawless savages and whites scarcely less ungovernable, and on one or
more occasions varying his life by crossing the ocean to gain interviews
with the colonial minister Seignelay, amid the splendid vanities of
Versailles. Strange to say, this man of hardy enterprise was a martyr
to the gout, which for more than a quarter of a century grievously
tormented him; though for a time he thought himself cured by the
intercession of the Iroquois saint, Catharine Tegahkouita, to whom he
had made a vow to that end. He was, without doubt, an habitual breaker
of the royal ordinances regulating the fur-trade; yet his services were
great to the colony and to the crown, and his name deserves a place of
honor among the pioneers of American civilization.[219]
When Hennepin met him, he had been about two years in the wilderness. In
September, 1678, he left Quebec for the purpose of exploring the region
of the Upper Mississippi, and establishing relations of friendship with
the Sioux and their kindred the Assiniboins. In the summer of 1679 he
visited three large towns of the eastern division of the Sioux,
including those visited by Hennepin in the following year, and planted
the King's arms in all of them. Early in the autumn he was at the head
of Lake Superior, holding a council with the Assiniboins and the lake
tribes, and inducing them to live at peace with the Sioux. In all this,
he acted in a public capacity, under the authority of the governor; but
it is not to be supposed that he forgot his own interests or those of
his associates. The intendant angrily complains that he aided and
abetted the _coureurs de bois_ in their lawless courses, and sent down
in their canoes great quantities of beaver-skins consigned to the
merchants in league with him, under cover of whose names the governor
reaped his share of the profits.
In June, 1680, while Hennepin was in the Sioux villages, Du Lhut set out
from the head of Lake Superior, with two canoes, four Frenchmen, and an
Indian, to continue his explorations.[220] He ascended a river,
apparently the Burnt Wood, and reached from thence a branch of the
Mississippi, which seems to have been the St. Croix. It was now that, to
his surprise, he learned that there were three Europeans on the main
river below; and fearing that they might be Englishmen or Spaniards
encroaching on the territories of the King, he eagerly pressed forward
to solve his doubts. When he saw Hennepin, his mind was set at rest; and
the travellers met with mutual cordiality. They followed the Indians to
their villages of Mille Lac, where Hennepin had now no reason to
complain of their treatment of him. The Sioux gave him and Du Lhut a
grand feast of honor, at which were seated a hundred and twenty naked
guests; and the great chief Ouasicoudé, with his own hands, placed
before Hennepin a bark dish containing a mess of smoked meat and wild
rice.
Autumn had come, and the travellers bethought them of going home. The
Sioux, consoled by their promises to return with goods for trade, did
not oppose their departure; and they set out together, eight white men
in all. As they passed St. Anthony's Falls, two of the men stole two
buffalo-robes which were hung on trees as offerings to the spirit of the
cataract. When Du Lhut heard of it he was very angry, telling the men
that they had endangered the lives of the whole party. Hennepin admitted
that in the view of human prudence he was right, but urged that the act
was good and praiseworthy, inasmuch as the offerings were made to a
false god; while the men, on their part, proved mutinous, declaring that
they wanted the robes and meant to keep them. The travellers continued
their journey in great ill-humor, but were presently soothed by the
excellent hunting which they found on the way. As they approached the
Wisconsin, they stopped to dry the meat of the buffalo they had killed,
when to their amazement they saw a war-party of Sioux approaching in a
fleet of canoes. Hennepin represents himself as showing on this occasion
an extraordinary courage, going to meet the Indians with a peace-pipe,
and instructing Du Lhut, who knew more of these matters than he, how he
ought to behave. The Sioux proved not unfriendly, and said nothing of
the theft of the buffalo-robes. They soon went on their way to attack
the Illinois and Missouris, leaving the Frenchmen to ascend the
Wisconsin unmolested.
[Sidenote: THE RETURN.]
After various adventures, they reached the station of the Jesuits at
Green Bay; but its existence is wholly ignored by Hennepin, whose zeal
for his own Order will not permit him to allude to this establishment of
the rival missionaries.[221] He is equally reticent with regard to the
Jesuit mission at Michilimackinac, where the party soon after arrived,
and where they spent the winter. The only intimation which he gives of
its existence consists in the mention of the Jesuit Pierson, who was a
Fleming like himself, and who often skated with him on the frozen lake,
or kept him company in fishing through a hole in the ice.[222] When the
spring opened, Hennepin descended Lake Huron, followed the Detroit to
Lake Erie, and proceeded thence to Niagara. Here he spent some time in
making a fresh examination of the cataract, and then resumed his voyage
on Lake Ontario. He stopped, however, at the great town of the Senecas,
near the Genesee, where, with his usual spirit of meddling, he took upon
him the functions of the civil and military authorities, convoked the
chiefs to a council, and urged them to set at liberty certain Ottawa
prisoners whom they had captured in violation of treaties. Having
settled this affair to his satisfaction, he went to Fort Frontenac,
where his brother missionary, Buisset, received him with a welcome
rendered the warmer by a story which had reached him that the Indians
had hanged Hennepin with his own cord of St. Francis.
From Fort Frontenac he went to Montreal; and leaving his two men on a
neighboring island, that they might escape the payment of duties on a
quantity of furs which they had with them, he paddled alone towards the
town. Count Frontenac chanced to be here, and, looking from the window
of a house near the river, he saw approaching in a canoe a Récollet
father, whose appearance indicated the extremity of hard service; for
his face was worn and sunburnt, and his tattered habit of St. Francis
was abundantly patched with scraps of buffalo-skin. When at length he
recognized the long-lost Hennepin, he received him, as the father
writes, "with all the tenderness which a missionary could expect from a
person of his rank and quality." He kept him for twelve days in his own
house, and listened with interest to such of his adventures as the friar
saw fit to divulge.
[Sidenote: LA SALLE'S LETTERS.]
And here we bid farewell to Father Hennepin. "Providence," he writes,
"preserved my life that I might make known my great discoveries to the
world." He soon after went to Europe, where the story of his travels
found a host of readers, but where he died at last in a deserved
obscurity.[223]
FOOTNOTES:
[212] The Sioux, or Dacotah, as they call themselves, were a numerous
people, separated into three great divisions, which were again
subdivided into bands. Those among whom Hennepin was a prisoner belonged
to the division known as the Issanti, Issanyati, or, as he writes it,
_Issati_, of which the principal band was the Meddewakantonwan. The
other great divisions, the Yanktons and the Tintonwans, or Tetons, lived
west of the Mississippi, extending beyond the Missouri, and ranging as
far as the Rocky Mountains. The Issanti cultivated the soil; but the
extreme western bands subsisted on the buffalo alone. The former had two
kinds of dwelling,--the _teepee_, or skin-lodge, and the bark-lodge. The
teepee, which was used by all the Sioux, consists of a covering of
dressed buffalo-hide, stretched on a conical stack of poles. The
bark-lodge was peculiar to the Eastern Sioux; and examples of it might
be seen, until within a few years, among the bands on the St. Peter's.
In its general character, it was like the Huron and Iroquois houses, but
was inferior in construction. It had a ridge roof, framed of poles,
extending from the posts which formed the sides; and the whole was
covered with elm-bark. The lodges in the villages to which Hennepin was
conducted were probably of this kind.
The name Sioux is an abbreviation of _Nadouessioux_, an Ojibwa word,
meaning "enemies." The Ojibwas used it to designate this people, and
occasionally also the Iroquois, being at deadly war with both.
Rev. Stephen B. Riggs, for many years a missionary among the Issanti
Sioux, says that this division consists of four distinct bands. They
ceded all their lands east of the Mississippi to the United States in
1837, and lived on the St. Peter's till driven thence in consequence of
the massacres of 1862, 1863. The Yankton Sioux consist of two bands,
which are again subdivided. The Assiniboins, or Hohays, are an offshoot
from the Yanktons, with whom they are now at war. The Tintonwan, or
Teton Sioux, forming the most western division and the largest, comprise
seven bands, and are among the bravest and fiercest tenants of the
prairie.
The earliest French writers estimate the total number of the Sioux at
forty thousand; but this is little better than conjecture. Mr. Riggs, in
1852, placed it at about twenty-five thousand.
[213] These baths consist of a small hut, covered closely with
buffalo-skins, into which the patient and his friends enter, carefully
closing every aperture. A pile of heated stones is placed in the middle,
and water is poured upon them, raising a dense vapor. They are still
(1868) in use among the Sioux and some other tribes.
[214] Hennepin's notice of the falls of St. Anthony, though brief, is
sufficiently accurate. He says, in his first edition, that they are
forty or fifty feet high, but adds ten feet more in the edition of 1697.
In 1821, according to Schoolcraft, the perpendicular fall measured forty
feet. Great changes, however, have taken place here, and are still in
progress. The rock is a very soft, friable sandstone, overlaid by a
stratum of limestone; and it is crumbling with such rapidity under the
action of the water that the cataract will soon be little more than a
rapid. Other changes equally disastrous, in an artistic point of view,
are going on even more quickly. Beside the falls stands a city, which,
by an ingenious combination of the Greek and Sioux languages, has
received the name of Minneapolis, or City of the Waters, and which in
1867 contained ten thousand inhabitants, two national banks, and an
opera-house; while its rival city of St. Anthony, immediately opposite,
boasted a gigantic water-cure and a State university. In short, the
great natural beauty of the place is utterly spoiled.
[215] Oanktayhee, the principal deity of the Sioux, was supposed to live
under these falls, though he manifested himself in the form of a
buffalo. It was he who created the earth, like the Algonquin Manabozho,
from mud brought to him in the paws of a musk-rat. Carver, in 1766, saw
an Indian throw everything he had about him into the cataract as an
offering to this deity.
[216] In the edition of 1683. In that of 1697 he had grown to seven or
eight feet. The bank-swallows still make their nests in these cliffs,
boring easily into the soft sandstone.
[217] Hennepin speaks of their size with astonishment, and says that the
two together would weigh twenty-five pounds. Cat-fish have been taken in
the Mississippi, weighing more than a hundred and fifty pounds.
[218] The "Lover's Leap," or "Maiden's Rock" from which a Sioux girl,
Winona, or the "Eldest Born," is said to have thrown herself, in the
despair of disappointed affection. The story, which seems founded in
truth, will be found, not without embellishments, in Mrs. Eastman's
_Legends of the Sioux_.
[219] The facts concerning Du Lhut have been gleaned from a variety of
contemporary documents, chiefly the letters of his enemy Duchesneau, who
always puts him in the worst light, especially in his despatch to
Seignelay of 10 Nov., 1679, where he charges both him and the governor
with carrying on an illicit trade with the English of New York. Du Lhut
himself, in a memoir dated 1685 (see Harrisse, _Bibliographie_, 176),
strongly denies these charges. Du Lhut built a trading fort on Lake
Superior, called Cananistigoyan (La Hontan), or Kamalastigouia (Perrot).
It was on the north side, at the mouth of a river entering Thunder Bay,
where Fort William now stands. In 1684 he caused two Indians, who had
murdered several Frenchmen on Lake Superior, to be shot. He displayed in
this affair great courage and coolness, undaunted by the crowd of
excited savages who surrounded him and his little band of Frenchmen. The
long letter, in which he recounts the capture and execution of the
murderers, is before me. Duchesneau makes his conduct on this occasion
the ground of a charge of rashness. In 1686 Denonville, then governor of
the colony, ordered him to fortify the Detroit; that is, the strait
between Lakes Erie and Huron. He went thither with fifty men and built a
palisade fort, which he occupied for some time. In 1687 he, together
with Tonty and Durantaye, joined Denonville against the Senecas, with a
body of Indians from the Upper Lakes. In 1689, during the panic that
followed the Iroquois invasion of Montreal, Du Lhut, with twenty-eight
Canadians, attacked twenty-two Iroquois in canoes, received their fire
without returning it, bore down upon them, killed eighteen of them, and
captured three, only one escaping. In 1695 he was in command at Fort
Frontenac. In 1697 he succeeded to the command of a company of infantry,
but was suffering wretchedly from the gout at Fort Frontenac. In 1710
Vaudreuil, in a despatch to the minister Ponchartrain, announced his
death as occurring in the previous winter, and added the brief comment,
"c'était un très-honnête homme." Other contemporaries speak to the same
effect. "Mr. Dulhut, Gentilhomme Lionnois, qui a beaucoup de mérite
et de capacité."--_La Hontan_, i. 103 (1703). "Le Sieur du Lut, homme
d'esprit et d'expérience."--_Le Clerc_, ii. 137. Charlevoix calls him
"one of the bravest officers the King has ever had in this colony." His
name is variously spelled Du Luc, Du Lud, Du Lude, Du Lut, Du Luth, Du
Lhut. For an account of the Iroquois virgin, Tegahkouita, whose
intercession is said to have cured him of the gout, see Charlevoix, i.
572.
On a contemporary manuscript map by the Jesuit Raffeix, representing the
routes of Marquette, La Salle, and Du Lhut, are the following words,
referring to the last-named discoverer, and interesting in connection
with Hennepin's statements: "Mr. du Lude le premier a esté chez les
Sioux en 1678, et a esté proche la source du Mississippi, et ensuite
vint retirer le P. Louis [_Hennepin_] qui avoit esté fait prisonnier
chez les Sioux." Du Lhut here appears as the deliverer of Hennepin. One
of his men was named Pepin; hence, no doubt, the name of Lake Pepin.
[220] _Memoir on the French Dominion in Canada, N. Y. Col. Docs._, ix.
781.
[221] On the other hand, he sets down on his map of 1683 a mission of
the Récollets at a point north of the farthest sources of the
Mississippi, to which no white man had ever penetrated.
[222] He says that Pierson had come among the Indians to learn their
language; that he "retained the frankness and rectitude of our country"
and "a disposition always on the side of candor and sincerity. In a
word, he seemed to me to be all that a Christian ought to be" (1697),
433.
[223] Since the two preceding chapters were written, the letters of La
Salle have been brought to light by the researches of M. Margry. They
confirm, in nearly all points, the conclusions given above; though, as
before observed (_note_, 186), they show misstatements on the part of
Hennepin concerning his position at the outset of the expedition. La
Salle writes: "J'ay fait remonter le fleuve Colbert, nommé par les
Iroquois Gastacha, par les Outaouais Mississipy par un canot conduit par
deux de mes gens, l'un nommé Michel Accault et l'autre Picard, auxquels
le R. P. Hennepin se joignit pour ne perdre pas l'occasion de prescher
l'Évangile aux peuples qui habitent dessus et qui n'en avoient jamais
oui parler." In the same letter he recounts their voyage on the Upper
Mississippi, and their capture by the Sioux in accordance with the story
of Hennepin himself. Hennepin's assertion, that La Salle had promised to
send a number of men to meet him at the mouth of the Wisconsin, turns
out to be true. "Estans tous revenus en chasse avec les Nadouessioux
[_Sioux_] vers Ouisconsing [_Wisconsin_], le R. P. Louis Hempin
[_Hennepin_] et Picard prirent résolution de venir jusqu'à l'emboucheure
de la rivière où j'avois promis d'envoyer de mes nouvelles, comme
j'avois fait par six hommes que les Jésuistes desbauchèrent en leur
disant que le R. P. Louis et ses compagnons de voyage avoient esté
tuez."
It is clear that La Salle understood Hennepin; for, after speaking of
his journey, he adds: "J'ai cru qu'il estoit à propos de vous faire le
narré des aventures de ce canot parce que je ne doute pas qu'on en
parle; et si vous souhaitez en conférer avec le P. Louis Hempin,
Récollect, qui est repassé en France, il faut un peu le connoistre, car
il ne manquera pas d'exagérer toutes choses, c'est son caractère, et à
moy mesme il m'a escrit comme s'il eust esté tout près d'estre bruslé,
quoiqu'il n'en ait pas esté seulement en danger; mais il croit qu'il luy
est honorable de le faire de la sorte, et _il parle plus conformément à
ce qu'il veut qu'à ce qu'il scait_."--_Lettre de la Salle, 22 Août,
1682_ (1681?), Margry, ii. 259.
On his return to France, Hennepin got hold of the manuscript, _Relation
des Découvertes_, compiled for the government from La Salle's letters,
and, as already observed, made very free use of it in the first edition
of his book, printed in 1683. In 1699 he wished to return to Canada;
but, in a letter of that year, Louis XIV. orders the governor to seize
him, should he appear, and send him prisoner to Rochefort. This seems to
have been in consequence of his renouncing the service of the French
crown, and dedicating his edition of 1697 to William III. of England.
More than twenty editions of Hennepin's travels appeared, in French,
English, Dutch, German, Italian, and Spanish. Most of them include the
mendacious narrative of the pretended descent of the Mississippi. For a
list of them, see _Hist. Mag._, i. 346; ii. 24.