STRANGE STORIES
OF THE GREAT RIVER
[Illustration:
See page 61
HE HAD THE UNCANNY FEELING OF BEING WATCHED]
STRANGE STORIES
OF THE
GREAT RIVER
THE ADVENTURES OF A BOY EXPLORER
BY
JOHNSTON GROSVENOR
ILLUSTRATED
[Illustration: logo]
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
STRANGE STORIES OF THE GREAT RIVER
Copyright, 1918, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
Published May, 1918
CONTENTS
PAGE
FOREWORD ix
I. A PAPER FLEET 1
II. WHITE CALUMET 17
III. SIX SIOUX 32
IV. HUNTERS ALL 53
V. MANY MOUTHS 68
VI. ON THE ROCK 82
VII. JOLLY ROGER 99
VIII. BROKEN POTS 118
IX. THE SLAVE SHIP 136
X. PRETTY PRINCESS 152
XI. STAGS OF TWELVE 166
XII. BRIDGES OF BOATS 179
AFTERWORD 193
ILLUSTRATIONS
HE HAD THE UNCANNY FEELING OF BEING WATCHED _Frontispiece_
THE MEN WENT HEADLONG INTO THE RAPIDS _Facing p._ 28
ANTHONY FLUNG AGAINST HIM WITH ALL THE FORCE
OF DESPERATION " 114
THE TWO MEN CLUNG DESPERATELY TO THE BRANCHES
THEY HAPPENED TO BE ON AND WENT DOWN-STREAM
WITH IT " 188
FOREWORD
THERE is a river so long and wide that it is the pride of our
continent; a very Father of Waters.
It draws many other streams into its basin and forms the largest
drainage system in the world.
In early days this Great River was almost unknown. A few savages
had paddled their skiffs upon it. Curious tales were told about it.
Monsters guarded it. Sorcerers lived in its caverns. Mystic creatures
both good and bad swam through its rapids.
After the New World was discovered some daring French explorers longing
for adventure traveled into those wilds to see if they could find the
hidden waterway of Indian romance.
One of them, a bold trader of Canada, in his scarlet coat and
three-cornered hat, ventured into the farthest-away channels. Only one
of his companions, a boy, came back with him to present the map he drew
of the southern reaches of the mighty stream.
Next, a gray-frocked Belgian friar, sandaled and shaven of crown, set
down on parchment the northern trend of the same river. His goose quill
wrote the name of his young oarsman who sang to appease their Indian
captors as white men and red rode the waves together.
A nobleman of France in doublet and hose journeyed farther than all
others into the wilderness of bayous and tributaries and wrote his
tragic history in the foundations of the fortresses which he built and
in the heart of a stripling who served him.
Wearing the armor of a knight and commanding a fleet of brigantines,
another Canadian adventurer, half gentleman and half buccaneer, with a
motley Old World crew--one of them a whistler--made a gallant defense
of the river's mouth against the pirates of the Spanish Main.
And a wise young governor in robes and wig of state, whose favorite
companion was a fiddler of famous name and title--so says a quaint old
letter or two--began the battles which determined the reign of law and
order upon the Mississippi.
All of these soldiers of fortune and their scribes, Joliet and
Marquette, Accau and Hennepin, La Salle and Tonty, Iberville and
Bienville, made notes of their voyages to please the king who sent them
out.
From their records written in French long ago and almost forgotten are
taken these stories of the boy who shared in so many of their dangers
and successes.
The French discovered most of the Mississippi. They were not the very
first to see it, but they explored it, colonized it, and began its
prosperity.
The United States has inherited the work of their genius.
Just as a nation lives at its noblest when it has the friendship and
help of other countries, so a boy can better tell what to do with his
own life when he hears the things that other lads have done. He will
understand the present time after he has read the history of the past.
So with his plumed cap and his sword, with his whistle, his song and
his fiddle, the French boy, Anthony Auguelle, the Picard du Gay, opens
the brass lock of an ancient wooden-backed book, where he has been
hidden, and walks out gaily to tell to-day's folks of the strange part
he took in deciding the fate of the Great River and in the making of
America.
J. G.
INDIANA, 1918.
STRANGE STORIES OF THE GREAT RIVER
I
A PAPER FLEET
Searching for the Father of Waters with the Indians' Friend, Jacques
Marquette--A Voyage into the Unknown
A BOY was trying to learn a tune. He had an upper row of white, even
teeth which showed attractively when he sang, so that he appeared quite
like a cherub. But his two front lower teeth were crooked, overlapping
each other irregularly, and leaving spaces through which he could
whistle with many variations.
When he smiled these teeth gave him an impish expression. If he
followed the smile with laughter, the dimples in his chin so emphasized
the naughty look, that he seemed capable of any kind of mischief.
The quaint rhythm of the barbaric chant was hard to follow. He had to
bob his curly head, shuffle his feet, and beat out the time with his
hands to separate this new air from the medley of sounds about him.
"Flip, flop," went the white wings of gulls in the blue Canadian sky.
"Caw, caw," scolded numerous crows in the green tops of pines.
"Quack, quack," cried the ducks feeding among the sedges on the shore.
Waters, spreading to the horizon on three sides of the peninsula where
he stood, were as blue as the sky. Their waves, hurrying before a warm
wind, came leaping on the golden sands with a "Siss, siss, s-w-i-s-h"
of silver froth.
Gray sand-plovers ran back and forth over the beaches, "Pipe, pipe,
piping," continually. In the newly made brown garden plots, a flock of
blackbirds, "Chat, chat, chattered." Speckled meadow-larks rose from
among the dandelions of the sparse grass with full-throated trills.
As a chorus background for these singers, and not in the least
interfering with them, were three hundred Indians chanting with all
their lung power.
The boy stood in a gateway of the log stockade which inclosed the
grounds of the bark-shingled mission-house of Saint Ignatius. On the
shore was a hamlet of French traders buzzing like a hive of bees. Near
it a huddle of wigwams set up by some visiting Ottawa savages was as
full of clamor as a magpie family. Biggest and loudest of all boomed a
Huron Indian village within its bark cabins behind its fortifications
of picket fence.
On this commotion, which was characteristic of almost every French
settlement in the New World at that time, shone the early morning sun
of a bright spring day--an eventful and important day.
Traders and trappers and hunters were stopping here. Some were on their
voyage up the big waterways to Lake Superior, others on the trip down
toward Lake Erie, Niagara, and the settlements on the Saint Lawrence.
For this mission on the peninsula of Mackinaw stood where three of the
Great Lakes came together and attracted travelers, because it was such
a central and good bartering point.
The half-civilized, half-Christianized Hurons, who loved trade, had
taken this peninsula, put a stockade round their village, and, like
good citizens, came regularly to mass at the mission each morning,
before commencing their daily business of piling up wealth in the white
man's fashion.
"The Indians are colored like a rainbow," the boy noticed. "Imagine a
rainbow singing!" Through his pursed lips he was still struggling with
that rainbow's tune.
Since this was to be a very special festal day, the Indians wished to
do honor to it. "Behold us garbed in every one of the seven colors oft
repeated!" their beads and feathers, paints and blankets of the gayest
seemed to shriek.
After the long, dark, cold winter, the sunshine and the breeze stirred
them pleasantly. The new season warmed the yeast of action in their
veins. They felt the ancient instincts of their race stirring in
response to the call of the rising year. This jolly old world is full
of games and feasts. All rough and primitive sports have had their
beginnings in just such days as this sparkling morning at Mackinaw.
Before the old chief of the tribe could preen himself to start the
"O-o-o-oh, e-e-e-eh, ou-ou-ou-ouh" of the sunrise hymn which the
priest of the mission had taught him to lead his braves in singing, an
exuberant young Ottawa buck had followed his own wayward impulse and
had burst into the wildest and most vigorous verse he knew.
Sacrilege! That verse was neither hymn nor anthem. It was a favorite
scalp-song of his more savage cousins, the Chippewas.
In a moment other youths were humming it. They answered to its
suggestion as the pines answered to the wind. New voices joined in at
every repetition of its cadence. Its strains went to their heads and
feet like fire-water. One by one, as they took up the song, they felt
its movement and they began to swing into the measures of a dance. They
stepped out its time with their toes turned in.
The boy tried again to sing it. Then he managed to whistle it.
"It is an odd sort of music, but I love it. This concert suits the
weather better than one of our doleful, slow, wet-blanket hymns," he
thought, as he, too, began to sway back and forth. "I can't understand
the words. But by the way that buck clutches at his cherished top-knot
to emphasize the ditty, it must be some sort of a scalp-song he is
singing."
Distant Hurons heard the first notes, saw the movements of the dancers,
and came loping up, ready to fall into the vortex of play.
"Never, never, did I hear anything of the kind before," the boy
breathed hurriedly, enchanted by the novelty of the hour. "Prick up, my
ears, prick up!" He still found the tune difficult.
Indian musical intervals are a little different from the intervals
in the white man's conventional scale. It takes a quick ear to catch
them. A white man needs to be young and adroit if he hopes to imitate a
savage in a native dancing song.
A new note was added to the uproar as a gentle voice said, "Anthony,"
and an appealing hand was laid on the boy's sleeve. A black-gowned
priest had stepped to his side. "Oh, Anthony, help me! My poor children
do not know how they profane the church with that murderous song at its
very door." The priest could understand the words of the scalp-song and
he was filled with anxiety. "Quick! Think! What hymn can we adapt to
that tune--that heathen tune? I cannot follow it as you are doing. What
hymn can you sing to those measures? What hymn whose words they know?
They must be diverted from scalping thoughts. Help me!" and the face of
the priest, a Jesuit, young, handsome, pale with zeal, was bent upon
his cavorting Indians in deep concern.
The lad, Anthony, called thus to his duty as choir-boy, answered almost
at once: "Yes, Père Marquette, I will. Perhaps--perhaps--the Jubilate
might do."
"Try it," begged the priest.
"Begin _now_," insisted a man who was the Jesuit's companion. He also
was young, not more than thirty, and plainly a gentleman. He had the
air of a soldier. That he was in full sympathy with the priest could
be seen in the protecting stand he took beside the Père Marquette as
though to make his vigorous body a shield for his slighter friend in
case of trouble with the excited savages.
"Begin, Tony," he repeated, sharply. "Scalpsongs started in play may
end in deadly earnest. A brutal dance can lead them back to ferocious
rites and tangle us all in a massacre."
"Yes, Sieur Joliet," and Anthony, hastily gathering up the skirts of
his service gown, ran forward, jumped to the nearest stump-top, and
threw out his arms in the form of the cross. The roots of his curls
stirred oddly. He fancied he could feel them standing up. Yet he faced
the mob with keen delight. He wanted to be in the thick of things.
With what beating hearts under their calm appearance at the post of
duty the priest and the soldier of fortune watched the boy it would be
hard to tell. Each was thinking: "To-day we begin the big work of our
lives. Is our fortune to be lost for a song?"
Then a long melodious note, keyed high and sharp, struck like a sword
across the confusion of noise and motion and color. Its very fineness
cut its way. One exquisite boyish soprano rose above dozens of rough
barytones and coarse basses.
The Indians threw up their heads at that clarion call.
For many weeks, under the good priest's guidance, the boy had tutored
them in Church music. They had learned to listen for his keynote and to
follow his instructions. His yellow pate, his wide gray eyes, his young
grace and confidence, his white angelic gown, all so different from
their own swarthy gorgeousness, arrested their attention as nothing
else could do. For a surprised and shuffling moment their custom of
harkening to him struggled with their instinct for a spring orgy.
Sweet and clear--as compelling as a bugle summons--that long note came
again.
They hesitated in the song. They stumbled in the dance. Confusion threw
them out of tune and out of time. Then in the same key his voice took
up the scalp-song. In an obbligato of purest quality he intoned each
note. Their faltering and irresolution had broken their chorus. Their
music dwindled away. He was left singing almost alone.
By surprising them he had overborne them.
He repeated the strain. Artfully he retarded it. He shaped his
syllables into words. On their bewildered ears fell the prehistoric
strains absolutely true and charming. But in perfect measures, familiar
and desirable, came the Huron phrases which he sang each morning with
them. He was fitting the music of the scalp-song to a Huron translation
of a Catholic hymn. It was the Jubilate, "Oh, be joyful in the Lord,
all ye lands!"
Their dancing feet, all ready for any motion, gradually fell into the
time which his nodding head and his ringing tones marked for them--
the slower measures of the Church. And behold, they were _walking_, not
_dancing_. The words of every day came back readily to their lips as
he pronounced them distinctly and with reverence, "Serve the Lord with
gladness!"
Paganism dropped into their souls and hid away. The wild children
of the waters and of the forests began to move sedately toward the
mission, singing to native music the canticle they should rightly be
using at that hour, "And come before His Presence with a song!"
All Indians love noise. They have a childish joy in racket. Music good
or bad catches their fancy. A rollicking tune sometimes controls them
when prayers fall useless. Any sort of a singer finds favor with a
missionary. The careless mocking-bird in Anthony's throat was the Père
Marquette's chief aid, as he struggled out of one danger into another
in going from fort to fort.
Anthony Auguelle was a waif out of France, gay and sunny as his own
province of Picardy, a runaway, a stowaway, an emigrant; one small item
in the unlisted riffraff tumbling over the side of some square-rigged
hulk onto the shores of the New World. He had been in turn the
companion of pirates and priests, of scullions and captains.
When his fighting spirit and his doubled fists could not make him a
place, his voice could win him bread. "Sing for your supper, Tony,"
was the command which any roustabout of a port might give him. Because
of the joyousness of his chantey in response, he had cuddled warm in
the shipping many a night between Havre and Quebec, and in the canoes
between Quebec and Mackinaw, when others shivered neglected. The Picard
du Gay they called him.
"To save his soul I will befriend the boy," was the priest's motive
in attaching him to this expedition where there was much danger from
savages. "To interest the Indians he ought to go with us," was the
trader's idea.
The Tionnontateronnous Indians, whose name even the patient and
ceremonious Jesuits felt obliged to shorten to Huron Indians for daily
use, lived at Michilimakinac--dubbed Mackinaw--near the lake which was
finally called Michigan instead of by its right name of Michihiganing.
The Outaouasinagaux when hurried became Ottawas.
The Hurons were clever and had made friends with the French from the
time of the founding of Quebec, foreseeing that peace, prosperity,
and a helpful religion would come to them through the ministry of the
Society of Jesus and the knowledge of the _coureurs de bois_, those
French fur hunters and traders of the forests, who befriended the
society's missionaries.
"We must have patience with untutored minds," the priest had said in
days past, when, through all the changes made by Indian wars and the
shifting of fishing-places and hunting-grounds, he had followed these
Indians. "You traders in my wake must treat the natives justly."
So when, at the feast of the Virgin in the previous autumn, there had
come to this settlement that soldier and explorer, that prince of
traders, the Sieur Joliet, with papers from Frontenac, the governor
of Canada, which commissioned him to take their priest, the Père
Marquette, and to go upon a voyage in search of a Great River--that
water Messipi--of which some Indians had heard, but which no white man
had yet seen, the Père Marquette's grateful Hurons were all alert to
help the adventurous plan.
"What is good for priests and traders is good for us; it gets us beads
and iron knives."
To Mackinaw, then, during the winter, was brought every fact and fancy
the savages could find out about the Great Water.
* * * * *
To these bartering Indians new waterways discovered meant new fur lands
opened. New lands opened meant more traders coming. More traders coming
meant more wealth for the Hurons, just as it did for their ruler, His
Majesty the King, Louis XIV of France.
"In the matter of greed," thought the naughty Anthony, "the frowsy
savage in his blanket and the splendid king upon his throne are twins
at heart." But in his secret mind he told himself: "When that brave
gentleman, the Sieur Joliet, desires to go exploring for the glory
of achievement, and when that pious aristocrat, the Père Marquette,
accompanies him for the sake of the Church--ah, that is quite another
matter. I make my bow to them."
Said Louis Joliet to Jacques Marquette: "Our Canadian governor has
learned the importance of finding and taking possession of that mighty
river which the western natives say runs from the northern lakes to the
southern seas. Because I am Canadian born and educated and know many
Indian languages and customs and the demands of various climates, I am
chosen for the venture. I am glad that my orders are for you to make
the voyage with me. There are gold-mines, jewels, and riches untold
upon that river Messipi."
Said Jacques Marquette to Louis Joliet: "There are people upon that
Great Water who have never heard of our religion. I am enraptured at
the good news of my selection for the voyage. It gives me happiness to
expose my life for the salvation of all these nations."
"If we find the river which will give this land a water path to the
open seas and a way to the ports of the earth, we will hold the
destinies of empires in our hands. What is danger but the zest to make
such ventures the greatest delight? We will add to the sum of human
happiness and to the wealth of mankind," said the Sieur Joliet. And his
friend replied, "I will count the whole world well lost if I save some
heathen souls."
The time had come for setting out.
The enterprise was hazardous, but all care had been used in getting
ready. And now, on the 17th of May, 1673, the whole concourse of
Hurons, Ottawas, traders, and trappers trailed to the beach to see the
start.
There stood the Indian canoes of the kind that made possible the early
exploration of the New World. The savages, commanded by Sieur Joliet,
blessed by Père Marquette, cajoled by Anthony, had made all new ones of
birch bark--that _Birch papyracea_, paper birch--which is so easy to
build, so fast to paddle, so light to carry.
In them this voyage was to be made.
Anthony was packing the stores. "Here is maize in plenty; there is
jerked venison."
Two articles! Indian corn and dried meat! This was the whole stock of
food for men who were to go on a precarious journey of unknown length.
There were some treasures of beads and trinkets and gay cloth; much
ammunition for the guns was in the load.
Besides these articles each canoe was built to carry three full-grown
men. There were two canoes.
Into the first one stepped the Sieur Joliet and a couple of _coureurs
de bois_. The second canoe received one _coureur de bois,_ one
undersized half-breed interpreter, the slender Père Marquette and his
choir boy, Anthony. Seven men in all.
Seven men in all! For one of the biggest ventures of any age!
Seven men in all! For one of the greatest achievements in the world!
Strange that they should try it! Stranger still if they should win!
Each man had a gun and a paddle and the clothes upon his back. His
main equipment was his strength of purpose, his faith in himself. The
commander of the expedition carried a sword. The priest bore a tiny
traveling-altar.
They took up their paddles and set their prows toward the lake.
The lively bucks on shore again began the old, old chant. They used
the words of the Jubilate. That meant they were promising to be good
children. The Hurons could be trusted to keep the fort in peace.
Oh, tiny fleet of birch bark! Oh, little band of explorers in paper
craft! As they disappeared over the horizon in a nimbus of gold, how
could the loyal band of natives who watched the departure understand
the high hopes of those brave French hearts? Or dream that the voyagers
were trying to find the longest river system in the world? Or that out
of their adventures should grow such interest and investigation and
settlement as to make the valley of the Great River the happy home
to-day of fifty million Americans?
They went through the Mackinaw Straits, across Lake Michigan, into
Green Bay, and up the Fox River to its source; then by portage into
the headwaters of a river which they spelled Mescousing but which
they pronounced much like Wisconsin. They visited the wild-rice
people--Oumalouminik, and the fire-folk--Aweatsewaenrrhonous, and
gained more news of the West.
Many a school-boy of to-day, who has made himself a canoe in his
manual-training class, knows that he can set it afloat in these same
rivers and in a wet season follow Anthony's route along a water path as
old as the first Indian--perhaps older.
As they drove along there was constant danger from the wilds. There was
heavy toil at the paddles. But there was also the daily excitement of
a chase for game and the ever fresh pleasure of country luxuriant and
sunny unfolding before them.
They went far past all regions which the savages had described.
In fine June weather they came to the mouth of the Wisconsin. There
they saw what northern white men had never seen before--the grand old
Father of Waters rolling past!
They took a stand upon the shore at 42° 30´. The leather-clad _coureurs
de bois,_ happy and careless and hairy, their locks hanging down their
backs, their beards covering their chests, their forearms and knees all
overgrown like forest fauns, helped the black-gowned priest to make a
huge rustic cross. The clouted half-breed dug a hole to plant it in.
Anthony, in buff jerkin, buckled shoes, and long hose, grew serious as
he held the instruments of observation while the Sieur Joliet made the
official notes and arranged upon the cross the lilies of France, the
emblem of the Bourbons.
Then the Sieur Joliet removed his cocked hat. With the breeze stirring
his handsome locks and his jaunty mustache, the sun glinting through
the gold and silver embroideries of his skirted coat and on the soft
polished leather of his cavalier boots, he drew his sword.
In the name of the king this picturesque group took possession of the
Great River. This was the real beginning of progressive history of the
famous stream so full of stories. It was a princely gift to France--a
priceless boon to the world.
II
WHITE CALUMET
Carrying a Peace Pipe among Savages for the Commandant, Louis
Joliet--Lost in the Rapids
THE rushes at the shore-line were broken and bent. Anthony, on watch,
glanced across the prow of his canoe and saw on the low ground the
prints of human feet! Marks of bare toes in the mud!
No need to signal, "Look out!" His electrical pause had run like
wireless through both canoes. All fingers pointed to the same spot.
"Men! Savage men!"
Now this thing happened many, many years before the days of Robinson
Crusoe. That man Friday with the large historic feet was not yet born.
This surprise was all the Frenchmen's own.
After coming for hundreds of miles in primeval loneliness and spending
weeks without seeing a human face, these tracks filled the explorers
with curiosity and with caution. They noted the traces with swift
decision. All wanted to land and investigate.
"I must speak my message to every nation," said the priest, picking up
his tiny altar.
"There is a path, well beaten, leading inland," the Sieur Joliet
pointed out as he loaded himself with trinkets. "We two will go ahead
and make friends. Stay offshore on guard, you others, until we send
for you," and both leaders disappeared through the long grass of the
rolling meadow.
After what seemed a wait of many hours, the impatient watchers saw upon
the path the figure of an Indian youth running toward them. He stopped
suddenly with hand outstretched when he neared the water's edge.
The interpreter gave him greeting in Algonquin, that common tongue of
midwestern natives, "How welcome are the feet of the messenger who
comes in friendship!"
The answer was in a boyish treble, a trifle breathless, in the language
of the Illinois, a form of the Algonquin. The sentences were clear and
so slowly spoken that in spite of their astonishment at the age of the
runner they understood him. "How beautiful, O Frenchmen, is the sun
when thou cometh to visit us! Our town awaits thee! Thou shalt enter
our cabins in peace!" Having made the speech taught him, he held out a
piece of white paper as a token of good faith.
So the explorers paddled in and gazed at the youth with interest.
He was not as tall as Anthony, nor so heavy. He was straighter and
more supple than any white boy could ever be. His head, tufted with
a chieftain's scalp-lock, was set arrogantly on his slim round neck.
No traveler, however observing, could have described his clothes. He
hadn't any!
His hair and eyes were black; his teeth were very white by contrast;
his features were straight and delicate.
On his left wrist, which he placed against his heart to conceal, with
Indian instinct, even so natural a function as its rapid beating from
his hurrying, he held an iridescent passenger-pigeon.
A piece of paper in an Indian country was a guarantee of a white man's
summons. They followed it with confidence. Anthony began immediately,
"My name's Tony. What is yours?"
The little Indian threw back his head in the haughtiest of gestures,
"He who speaks is a slave. He is called the Wingèd One, a son of the
greatest sachem of the Southwest tribes. By his captors--lean dogs of
Illinois--he has been given to the Black-gowned One and to the white
man with beads who is master of the Black-gown."
To Anthony's puzzled look the interpreter replied: "Some Indian tribes
sell or give as presents the captives they take in conquest. They have
traded him to Sieur Joliet for beads."
So swiftly had the Wingèd One come to them that they had gone some
distance on the path before they began to meet the groups of savages
who had plainly started from the village when he did and had been
outdistanced. They were strung out all over the prairie according to
the speed they had been able to make trying to keep up with the Wingèd
One. They, too, were dressed in a costume of Mother Nature's designing,
the close-fitting garment of their own skins.
"Don't be afraid," said the half-breed, "all they want is to look at
us." And sure enough, the stragglers passed quietly, devouring with
their eyes these so queer folks from the other side of the world.
Vivid with interest, Anthony laid a friendly hand on the Wingèd One and
showed his delightfully crooked teeth in a grin of comradeship. The
savage returned it with a cool stare, but the color spreading in a deep
blush, wave upon wave, from brow to toes, under his bronze skin, showed
that the compliment had gone home to his lonely little slave heart. His
agitation made the pigeon flutter at his side.
At this response, Anthony threw back his head and laughed aloud.
Indians have a sense of humor, but they do not yield to laughter as
this French boy did. The merry sound drew the little slave to him and
the two strays, one from Picardy, one from the desert, went together to
join the trader and the priest.
Hundreds of Indians, inhabitants of three villages, had come to see
the white men. They were gathered in the open space in front of the
sachem's bark tent. An envoy made a speech of greeting:
"We thank thee for taking so much pains to come and visit us. Never has
the earth seemed so lovely nor the sun so bright as to-day. Never has
the Great River been so calm nor so free from rocks. Your magic canoes
have removed all obstacles as they came. Never has our tobacco tasted
so fine nor our corn looked so thriving. Come and dwell with us that we
may know your Manitou!"
To honor the guests a busy preparation for a grand feast was going
forward in the center of the town. There was to be smoking of the peace
pipes. Most splendid of all, a dance of the calumet was soon to begin.
Warriors strutted in the front rows of the crowd. Squaws slipped to the
back. Men and women singers gathered under a tree. Little red cubs of
babies scuttled in and out. Dogs got under everybody's feet. The sun
was going down and firelight and twilight mingled with the shadows.
On a mat of woven rushes lay the all-powerful calumet. It was a pipe
with a red-stone bowl for tobacco and a long hollow stem of two feet or
more. Feathers of the white eagle decorated it. Red feathers would have
meant a calumet of war--and destruction to the guests!
This calumet was to be given as the greatest of all compliments to the
bead-bringing visitors. It was a passport, a letter of credit, and a
talisman to any group of strange Indians.
When the music for the dance began all the Indians sang the same
air, but they sang in octaves. The soprano of the women and boys,
the barytone of some men, the bass of others, produced a chorus full
and rich. Drums, many high, a few low in tone, supplied the place
of harmonized chords which Indian composers cannot manage. To this
accompaniment, weird and incomplete, but agreeable to Anthony's ear,
the dancers stepped in perfect time and graceful swaying as they kept
to the long-drawn-out, bewildering, and sweetly monotonous round upon
round.
As the shining copper-red bodies of the dancers gyrated, their shadows
leaped and fell. When the firelight flickered, the eyes of the watching
hundreds squatting in the background glowed green like fox-fire.
In the pauses of the music speeches were made and more presents given,
first by the sachems and then by the Frenchmen.
The French had so strong a passion for courtesy as to carry their good
manners even into the wigwams of savages. In return the natives were
glad to honor such guests with barbaric splendor. Perhaps of all the
strange things that have happened on the Great River none is stranger
than the fact that white men of a later day should have forgotten the
politeness with which the clever Illinois nations first received their
race and should have rudely and greedily turned such powerful allies
into revengeful foes.
As they went on down the river the priest handled the calumet gingerly
and carried it in a prominent place. "Odd!" he said, "that a toy of
feathers should be the god of peace and war! In a wilderness where
brute force and cunning seem to hold sway that the power of an idea--a
fanciful amulet--should be the arbiter of life and death! That
scientific explorers should pin their hopes to an eagle's plume!"
As they went from one village to another some natives showed them
hospitality, some indifference, some hatred, but all were obedient to
the white calumet's demand for peace. "Men do not give to the crowns
and scepters of kings the honor Indians pay to the calumet."
Very often at sunrise Anthony could prophesy to the little slave:
"To-day we will come to a wattled hamlet. The Sieur Joliet will give
knives and trinkets to the sachems. The Père Marquette will preach.
Each Indian will touch my curls to feel if they are real and ask what
kind of a stone I use to file my teeth nice and crooked so the songs
will come through." At sunset he could add, "I told you so!"
But when on a quiet morning at 33° latitude the little slave foretold,
"The Wingèd One to-day will meet many enemies," Anthony did not believe
him, for none of the white men could see signs of Indians.
"In yonder elm a sentinel sits."
The explorers glanced sharply about; nothing showed among the leaves.
"Above the whitewood a smoke signal rises."
Only summer drifts of cloud met their gaze.
"Red men stalk the white."
It was unbelievable; the level shore spaces were empty.
"Ambushed!" cried the child. "Hold up the calumet!"
Wooden pirogues loaded with armed savages swung across the Mississippi
in front of them. A startled backward turn showed them another barrage
of the same sort cutting off retreat upriver. On both shores painted
and feathered men sprang up by dozens to howl like fiends. They leaped
into the water to catch the canoes. A kindly eddy swirled the birch
barks out of reach. Whoops of rage burst from the warriors. A shower
of arrows chased the explorers. Tomahawks whizzed close.
They ducked; ducked promptly.
Not so the little slave. He stood erect and let a tomahawk snip off
half his cherished topknot without flinching.
An Indian child baiting warriors caught the attention of the old
braves. They scanned him so closely that they saw the calumet at which
he pointed. They hastened to throw down their bows and arrows in token
of submission to the peace pipe. Magic calumet!
Anthony did not enjoy the visit which followed nor the meetings with
other inhabitants of this group of villages. He had a constant desire
to look behind him. There was often a queer weakness in his knees.
He wanted to keep his curly scalp close to the white eagle feathers.
The temper of these observers of the calumet's command was not all he
wished it might be.
Yet when one of the Akamsea sachems stood up in formal pow-wow his
words were fair. And he was agreeable to look upon. He was tall. He
was straight. He shone like a copper candlestick. He had on his best
clothes--that is, there was a blue quill in his nose and a red one over
his left ear. For the rest he wore a blank expression and he carried
his own white calumet.
He told them, "Only once has a white man seen our Great River," then
added, with cold significance, "He lies buried here under the water."
He meant the Spaniard, Hernandez De Soto, who had come across the
country from the southeast more than a century before, and who had died
in 1541 on the banks of the Mississippi, which he was undoubtedly the
first to find.
"A few days' paddling to the south will bring your canoes to the mouth
of this Father of Waters; for it flows into the southern Gulf," the
sachem said.
Where the Messipi went was one of the chief things the French wanted
the Sieur Joliet to learn. This speech of the sachem was telling him
exactly what he wished to know.
"Savage Indians, in league with white men who do not observe the
calumet, infest the waters of the Gulf," was the sachem's next sinister
hint.
If the Frenchmen and their maps fell into the hands of their rivals,
Spain could claim and take immense territory just explored by the
agents of France. How might seven men in birch bark hold out against
the cutlasses and "six-pounders" of a galleon?
To keep what one has gained is better than to lose all in trying to win
more. The Sieur Joliet gave one glance at the low-hanging pole-star,
one word of command to his followers, and before his doubtful hosts
could form a plan for or against him the explorers were paddling with
all speed up the Mississippi beyond the chance of pursuit.
The Wingèd One fed his pigeon chinkapin, which he called chechinquamin,
with royal unconcern, but Anthony did his work nervously. "I am always
kind to _our_ slave," he thought, as he watched the little Indian with
pity, "but I cannot be sure how the Spaniards will treat _me_ if they
catch us."
Slavery in various forms has been part of the Great River's life.
After the news of its discovery had spread and vessels from many lands
dragged their anchors at its mouth, captives red, white, brown, yellow,
and black were traded to anybody and everybody for kegs of rum, or
hogsheads of molasses, or bundles of tobacco.
Among the pioneers who later came to settle the prairies and woodlands
of its fertile shores were numerous bound children, indentured servants
and redemptioners. Then ship-load upon ship-load of stolen African
negroes were brought to the fields of the South when the invention of
the cotton-gin made their labor profitable. For nearly two hundred
years the river washed away the tears of hapless bondsmen.
To escape any native pursuers whom his enemies might send after him
the Sieur Joliet led his men up the Illinois River to the Chakakou,
which the glaciers had twisted to run into Lake Michigan, but which
daring modern engineers have turned back again as it was in the very
beginning, so that nowadays the system of the Great Lakes is partly
drained into the Great River by the same _Chicago_, a geographical
condition which was not true when Anthony helped to draw it on the maps.
Père Marquette went on to his Indians at Mackinaw. Sieur Joliet took
Anthony and the little slave and one _coureur de bois_ and kept on down
toward Quebec to report. When at last they came near Montreal, full
of the triumph of their great discovery, they had paddled, since the
beginning of their venture, something like three thousand miles. It was
two years since the leader had left this fort for the West.
It was an autumn morning. Brilliantly colored forests lined the shores,
and between two big rocks, like a cathedral door, the rapids ahead
sparkled in a vista of incomparable loveliness. Over them flights of
migrating pigeons winged their way. The pet on the little slave's wrist
cooed an instinctive answer to their call, rose in a flash of silver
and soared into their midst.
With a cry of sorrow as though he were losing his dearest friend, the
small chieftain sprang to his feet and threw up his hands as if to
catch it as it flew. Too late to check this impetuous movement, the
other three crouched low and swung their bodies in a frenzied attempt
to preserve the balance of the canoe. Useless! It capsized on the
instant.
[Illustration: THE MEN WENT HEADLONG INTO THE RAPIDS]
The men went headlong into the rapids. The canoe smashed against a rock.
All the heavy goods dropped to the bottom of the channel. Lighter stuff
floated on the current a moment and then sank. Priceless notes and maps
and drawings burst their waterproof coverings on a sharp projection,
were scattered on a hundred waves, soaked with spray, hurled away, and
utterly destroyed.
Anthony plunged to the bottom. Treading water he tore off his jerkin
and came to the surface. He caught at an exposed stone. It was rough
enough for a fingerhold and he might have saved himself had he not
seen, sweeping past him, his Indian brother, the Wingèd One. Crushed by
some cruel rock, lifeless, beyond all human help, the stripling royal,
a slave no longer, drifted out into the happy hunting-grounds of all
his race.
Strong arms grasped Anthony--pulled him up to blessed air. He was kept
afloat and dragged free of the rapids. With the Sieur Joliet's fingers
in his hair to help, he began to swim again. They gained the bank and
clambered to safety.
But the _coureur de bois_--that laughing, hairy faun--had perished with
the Indian.
In bitterness and despair the boy fell upon the sod and abandoned
himself to grief.
The Sieur Joliet stood white and cold, like a ghost from whom all hope
has fled.
Oh, the cruelty of fate! To carry them harmless through half a hundred
rapids, only to shipwreck them in sight of home!
A long, hard voyage had come to naught; the proof of his greatest
discovery was lost.
"I have nothing left but my life," he groaned.
Bruised and battered, soaking wet and in rags, they trudged on through
a forest path. Sometimes they sank in utter weariness; oftener they
supported each other with renewed courage. And so at last the fort came
in sight and opened its comforting home-like gates to them.
Here the sorrowful Anthony saw the explorer give his empty hands to the
commandant. It seemed to the boy that all the glory of their expedition
had gone out in tragedy like the poor little slave who was lost in the
rapids.
Imagine his astonishment when he received the command, "Bring me, Tony,
a pot of ink and some quills."
The obedient Anthony, standing as assistant, with his gray eyes growing
wider and wider with admiration, saw the Sieur Joliet set the quills to
parchment. Under his skilful fingers there grew a picture of the course
of the Great River as he recollected it. He drew its twists and turns,
its distances and latitudes, put down the location and the names of the
villages where he had received the calumet.
It was a curious document of amazing accuracy. From it grew the further
history of the Mississippi. Whenever an adventurer wanted to go
a-wandering he studied this map. To Western explorers it became their
book of A B C.
III
SIX SIOUX
Marching into Captivity under the War-bonnets, Who Caught Friar
Hennepin--A Manitou Becomes a Miller
THE cold nose of a dog nuzzled into Anthony's ear. He woke with a jerk.
Peeping from under the brush screen of his camp he saw a file of canoes
drifting in the moonlight. He crouched low, pistol in hand, and waited.
No wild animal of the wood could have held itself motionless any better
than the boy did. His two companions were asleep, weapons ready at
their sides. The little dog, trained in a hard school, stood like a
pointer.
The canoes came on. Each silhouetted a dozen war-bonnets against
the silver river; then it slowly vanished. One by one they went
down-stream. Anthony sighed with relief. His path was up-stream. How
much better to have the warriors pass in the night than to meet them on
the river!
For northern Indians promptly murdered any white men whom they found
after dark. It was an easy way to win the steel knives which they
coveted more than any other one thing. Travelers hid themselves at
sunset, avoided prowlers in the gloaming, and tried to visit natives
by day in villages known to be peaceful. The arms carried by a small
trading party were of little use against a band of warriors.
Anthony lay down to rest again. He praised and petted the dog, who was
proud to stay on guard. But he could not go to sleep. There might be
more Indians, painted for battle, coming after these.
He was not as eager as usual for the voyage forward. Yet the backward
route was impossible. Behind him lay his base of supplies, Fort
Crevecoeur, that unhappy post whose very name meant heartbreak. Its
safety depended somewhat on the results of this journey of his, and he
could not see much luck ahead if the river was going to be peopled with
fighting-men of savage tribes.
Anthony was not equipped for war; only for defense. Besides the pistol
he had a sword. It had been given him by the Sieur Joliet.
For his successful explorations the French government had rewarded the
Sieur Joliet with the island of Anticosti, where he had established
a manor and given the boy a home. From there Anthony had brought
the sword and the pistol and his ever-recurring wanderlust to an
expedition which Robert Cavelier, called the Sieur La Salle, was
fitting out to develop the Mississippi Basin.
Under a patent from the king several forts for trade and for defense
had already been built. This one of Crevecoeur was the Sieur La
Salle's farthest outpost. It was the one French settlement to hold
their claim in the Mississippi Valley.
They had built it without trouble from the gentle Illinois Indians,
but the reckless adventurers who made up the troops which defended it
became so unruly when they were shut up in the little stockade during
the winter that a mutiny seemed always at hand.
No one knew when he laid his head on his pillow at night whether he
would still be wearing it in the morning.
So far, the strong hand of the commander had kept the soldiers within
bounds, but even he thought it wise to send out scouts as early as
possible to the western waters who might bring back news of fresh
discoveries, of more lands, perhaps gold-fields, to conquer. Then
the troops would forget their quarrels and advance together under
discipline in the hope of treasure trove.
A second group of traders promised to follow this first one to keep a
line for traffic and messages open. Where Anthony went others could
go. He was the scout.
A man named Accau was put in charge of ten thousand livres' worth of
goods in beads and knives and trinkets, for trading with any Indians
they might meet. A Franciscan friar, Louis Hennepin, was sent as a
missionary to the natives.
"Anybody but us would be afraid to undertake such a journey," he had
bragged, quite frankly.
"Perhaps you are, anyway," Accau had commented. "_I_ am."
Anthony was glum and talked little. And the fourth member of this
exploring party, a King Charles spaniel, Accau's pet, said nothing at
all. A faithful sentinel he stood watch at night, fulfilled his round
of duties, and found no fault with anything. King Charles was truly
royal; it was a joy to belong to his court.
Their canoe had dropped down the Illinois and then turned north on the
Great River.
They had fended off huge floating cakes of ice in the current; they had
fought hungry bears on the bank; they had struggled with cold all the
time and everywhere.
And now as he lay and watched with King Charles, on the lookout for
more Indians on the river, Anthony had one of those blue moods which
told him that he would probably have trouble with savages on top of
his other woes. For they had passed the mouth of the Wisconsin and were
in country new to them. Glimpses of red men came oftener and oftener.
They continually looked for overhanging trees on the shore-line, and
when they heard or saw savages coming they hid under the branches until
the strangers had gone again.
But now in mid-April--it was the year of 1680--they found themselves
in such a narrow and crooked channel that Accau became alarmed. "Go
ashore," he commanded Anthony. "Peep around each bend and signal us to
follow with the canoe if the way is safe."
The friar picked up his beads for a fervent prayer to his patron, Saint
Anthony of Padua.
Alas and alack! All their caution came too late.
Without a sound of blade in the water, without a tone of human voice, a
dozen or so of birch-bark craft swept round the point and swooped down
upon them!
There were three or four war-bonnets in each canoe. It was a pursuing
party such as Anthony had dreaded.
At the sight of quarry the savages broke the silence. They split the
air with war-whoops. They surrounded the explorers' canoe; grabbed it;
hustled it ashore. Big game!
The Frenchmen were confused with the topsy-turvy handling, the flutter
of feathers, and the deafening howls.
They tried to show a bold front. Père Louis said, "They cannot terrify
me," and he coolly picked out the ugliest chief, a furrowed old sinner
named Aquipaguetin, and presented the calumet. That worthy snatched it
from the friar and left him at the mercy of the fierce young braves.
These youths were eager to destroy the Frenchmen. Dozens of stone
knives and war-clubs were ready.
It was not mercy which stayed them. It was indecision.
How was any warrior to scalp such curious heads?
Above an odd white face unlike anything these savages had ever seen the
Père Louis, neatly tonsured, had no hair in the place where hair ought
to be. Accau sported a great beard. Whiskers were unknown among Indians.
King Charles, gazing from his hiding-place in his master's jerkin,
showed a second hairy face. The savages were dazed at this double
vision. They stared at Accau. They could not make up or down of him.
Spring winds had burnt Anthony's blond skin to a fiery hue. His fair
curls were tousled. Such a countenance in such a halo was too much for
them. Light hair was something entirely new. Curls were ornaments
undreamed of. Although he bore hair enough for a dozen scalps they had
no method for collecting it.