observance of the calumet. There was a flurry of objections, but they
obeyed. The bloodthirsty eyes were turned from the baffling scalps to
the presents which the explorers were trying to show.
Anthony addressed them in one Algonquin dialect after another. Accau
tried them in Iroquois and Huron. The friar thundered at them in Latin,
French, Portuguese, and Dutch. All words were alike to them.
A howl went up. "Mi-am-hi! Mi-am-hi! Mi-am-hi!"
Anthony picked up a stick. "I'll draw a map on the sand and show them
that I saw those Indians pass in the night far below here; the whole
tribe is now scudding westward over the prairies out of reach."
The map was drawn. Its meaning was plain; its news was unwelcome.
A clamor of rage followed. The old men wept aloud.
Aquipaguetin in particular lamented loudly.
The white men guessed that this chief had lost a son in battle with
the Miamis and that he was leading the Sioux in hope of revenge. So
disappointed was he at the turn of events that he shed grimy tears all
over Père Louis' shaven crown.
"This old fellow carries his son's bones with him to keep his wrath in
mind," the friar explained as well as he could above the hubbub. "If he
can't get even with the Miamis he will take out his anger on the next
people at hand--Frenchmen."
All the other chiefs began to wail.
"I think that we, too, are the same as dead," murmured Accau. "They
mourn as they would over the slain," and his whiskers quivered with
dread of torture and the stake. In hope of diverting the Indians he
began to hand out presents to Anthony, who tossed them with much show
to the friar, who in turn threw them among the chiefs, who groveled to
them like Circe's swine. Half a dozen axes and twice that number of
knives made a fine exhibit.
With the quick rolling eyes of men in deadly peril, the Frenchmen
noticed that the Indians, in spite of gay paint and big feathers, were
poorly set up. Their skin clothes were old, ragged, meager; their
bodies more than half naked in the chill weather. Their jewelry was of
shells, their embroideries of quills. Not one bit of iron showed, nor
did they have beads.
How like glittering wealth the bright cutting edges of the traders'
knives must look to them! By simple pantomime the friar told these
savages that many more white men with much more steel were coming to
give presents to those who were friendly and to kill those who were
not. Then he bent his neck with humility, bared it, and offering
Narrhetoba one of the sharp axes, cried, "Dare you to cut off a white
man's head?"
At that a hush fell on the group. Across the spring sunshine falling
through the leaves came a sparrow's song. One long moment passed in
hesitation.
Aquipaguetin longed to try a knife in just such use. But Narrhetoba,
who held the ax, was of another generation. He had a commercial spirit.
He saw a long line of white traders from whom he might gain more in
barter than he could from these three by violence. He withheld his
hand. By so doing he then and there split the warrior band into two
sections--those whose motives were like Aquipaguetin's, robbery through
murder; and those who, like Narrhetoba, preferred the safer and greater
gain by exploitation.
Father Louis bellowed at them in his biggest pulpit voice. The still
aisles of the forest began to resound with his words: "I am resolved to
allow myself to be killed without resistance. Behold the example I set
you! I come to convert the heathen."
Not one word could his listeners understand. But Narrhetoba nodded his
approval of this speech. He liked the spirit of the friar.
Accau began to take on hope for his skin and his goods. Anthony, who
had been sweating in cold drops, shook himself warm again and unscrewed
his drawn brows. "Perhaps I can placate Aquipaguetin, who is cross at
missing his kill." And the boy raised his pistol. In the gaping sight
of all he fired into a flock of wild turkeys which was whirling heavily
across the open shore space near where the council stood. Two fell from
the single shot.
The savages fell upon the game like roaches on a crumb. The feathered
victims were pulled and torn apart. Indians who had never seen a gun
examined the wonder of that shot. The birds' bones were broken as no
arrow could do it. How desirable one of those iron "lightning sticks"
would be for crippling an enemy!
Aquipaguetin seemed to be telling them that one gun in the hand was
worth any number in the dim future. The braves at Narrhetoba's side
snapped back that two guns would not go round. Wait for traders!
Narrhetoba, not looking quite as good a friend as his gestures said he
was, soon brought their calumet back to them, made each take a puff,
had one himself, and then gave it as a bitter pill to the defeated
Aquipaguetin. "Peace among us," was what the smoking meant.
Immediately the canoes were shoved into the water. The explorers were
jostled into them as rudely as they had been taken out. Prows were
turned up-stream. Anthony took heart. As long as they moved in the
direction his duty demanded he could make observations.
Father Louis stood up in the canoe as though he were pronouncing a
benediction on those congregated round him and he gravely intoned
these words, "I am not sorry to continue the business of making our
discoveries in connection with these native inhabitants."
For nineteen of the long, long days of April they were hurried up the
river at a furious pace. Peep o' day routed them from their slumbers
on the ground. They were given a hasty bit of food and pushed into the
canoes. Sometimes they stopped for dinner, sometimes not. Ceaselessly
until dusk the paddling continued.
Four miles an hour up-stream! It was a frightful speed! All records for
that generation were broken by the muscular Sioux. Ten hours a day! For
twice ten days! Anthony grew stupid from the excessive toil. The friar
was so jumbled in his note-taking that neither he nor his friends were
able to understand some of his words. Poor Accau was worn out with the
rough going. "I am always being waked up, yet I never have a chance to
go to sleep," he grumbled.
The white men sank exhausted whenever they stopped on shore. But the
young Indians, scrawny, sorry-looking specimens whose bodies seemed
as despicable as their minds, danced vigorously around the camp-fire
half the night singing the same verse of the same song over and over
again. The old Indians sat up and applauded by continuous yells until
the fires burnt out. Then they stood watch, turn about, until dawn. At
sun-up they were wide awake and well started on another day.
Each night Aquipaguetin began a weeping harangue in favor of killing
the Frenchmen, only to be out-talked and defrauded of his prey.
Thus through bad days and worse nights the upper Mississippi was first
navigated. These three Frenchmen in constant jeopardy discovered and
described it. No wonder they named a beautiful body of water they
found Lake Pepin (lake of tears) in honor of that sobbing old rascal
Aquipaguetin.
Suddenly one day they were set ashore, their canoe smashed, their
goods divided among the savage crew, and they themselves herded for a
cross-country run.
All that fatigue of rowing upon their arms was as nothing compared with
the strain now put upon the white men's legs. Up hill--down dale--over
streams--through woods--running--climbing--swimming--they scurried
at their best, driven by the tireless savages, who lighted the prairie
grass at their heels for the fun of seeing them sprint. Lucky for them
that their feet were shod with pluck!
Pell-mell into a native village they came at last. Howling squaws,
squealing papooses, yapping dogs burst into chorus to greet them.
They saw huts suggesting shelter, steaming pots suggesting food,
and a row of tall stakes tied about with dried grass and piled with
faggots--suggesting what?
The friar wondered how his name would look written among the martyrs.
Accau's eyes followed the goods with which he had been trusted; he
would need them no more. Anthony, viewing these preparations for the
reception of any prisoners the war party brought, felt as hollow as a
drum. "The frying-pan of captivity is better than the fire of those
stakes," he thought.
The more frightened a Frenchman is the quicker his wits work, the
more his gestures multiply, and the higher his courage rises. The boy
stooped and picked up a bunch of feathers blowing near his feet. If he
had not seen the feathers he would have taken something else, so short
was the time for action and so dire the need.
Into the center of the circle made by the little red blotches of the
supper fires he stepped pompously. He thus came into full view of the
big chief, Ouasicoude, of all the Sioux. Separating one lock from his
curls he thrust a feather half-way into the coil. Apparently intent
upon this odd toilet he arranged curl after curl, until the whole
tribe, as curious as crows, were giving him their full attention.
Then he turned his irresistible smile toward Ouasicoude and gaily burst
into laughter. Still laughing, he began to dance. He changed from
laughing into singing--not the slow, mournful, coarse, and angular
amusement of the Sioux, but a lively, tuneful jig of Picardy lads.
He was several years older than when he had sung to please the Père
Marquette. His voice had settled to a golden barytone. It fell
agreeably upon the ears of the most high executioner and he was seized
with an idea which at some time or other has awakened in the breast of
every king, "Why not have a minstrel at my court?" or, as Ouasicoude
put it, "Why not keep loud medicine in my own tepee?"
That Anthony and his companions should live or die, that the trio
should be saved to give their discoveries to the world, was nothing to
him; that his royal self should be amused was everything.
From the pebble-filled gourd which Aquipaguetin had thrust as a rattle
on each of the doomed men, the boy shook out a mocking tune as he
danced nearer and nearer to the stakes. At close range he drew his
pistol and shot into the dried grass on one of them. As will often
happen from such a charge the burning powder set the stuff on fire. It
blazed up. Before the astounded savages it consumed itself. This was
medicine tremendous! All forgot the original use of the stakes. They
wanted this new style of bonfire, and Anthony set them off amid loud
applause.
Ouasicoude loudly announced his intention to adopt the singer as
his son. Narrhetoba, clever courtier, with an admiring glance at
King Charles, immediately followed suit by taking Accau and the dog.
Glinting maliciously, Aquipaguetin proclaimed himself the father of the
friar, introducing the Franciscan to five squat squaws who were his new
mothers because they were this chieftain's wives.
In a twinkling the three explorers became members of the nation.
Ouasicoude and Anthony, Narrhetoba and Accau, Aquipaguetin and the
Friar Louis are the six Sioux who made this region famous in its early
days.
Now, the Sioux had a manitou. Greater than all other manitous it
demanded much worship. To this deity, then, the Sioux fathers must
present their adopted sons as an act of grace. When the Frenchmen were
separated from the other Indians and secretly led to the holy place
they were prepared for some solemn form of initiation into the tribe.
The home of the manitou burst in wonder on their eyes. It was a
splendid fall of laughing water. In the midst of primeval grandeur
the cascade dropped in a peerless sheet of spray forty feet over a
limestone ledge. No more beautiful spot for the residence of any
manitou could be imagined. He was hidden behind this flashing torrent.
He loved sacrifices. To please him the Sioux of all tribes threw many
gifts into a deep basin made by a hollow in the rock.
Anthony was weary of captivity. So tiresome and degrading had his days
among these savages become that he almost wished he could be lulled to
sleep by the voice of the cataract, never to wake again.
But as the boy watched old Aquipaguetin grow more and more fervid in
his devotions and saw him twitch his stone club with eager fingers and
roll his eyes round and round in search of some living thing which
would make a worthy sacrifice, life suddenly seemed very precious to
Anthony. He determined that he should not become food for any manitou,
no matter how great.
Aquipaguetin's ardor was spreading to the others. They caught his idea.
What nobler gifts had ever been given to the deity than these adopted
sons would make?
Anthony's first thought for defense was, "I must change my father's
point of view." The only remedy he knew for any savages' dangerous
notion was to turn their minds to something more startling.
The friar kept a wary front toward his parent-foe; Accau edged close to
Anthony; King Charles scented peril and, putting his tail between his
legs, sneaked under the waterfall. The hint was unmistakable. Acting
upon it, the boy, for his skin's sake, resolved to outwit superstition
with superstition.
As Aquipaguetin came toward him with swinging club, the boy pulled his
companions within the sacred arc of rainbow spray where no Indian dared
follow lest the manitou become enraged.
Anthony then hunched himself into the fanatical pose of an inspired
medicine-man. Because he was a capital mimic, as most singers are, his
words rang out in the same raving tones their own magician might have
used.
Ouasicoude and Narrhetoba paused thunderstruck. They thought the
manitou had thrown his mantle of sorcery over these aliens. They fell
on their faces and did obeisance to the waterfall. Aquipaguetin was not
so sure of the divine nature of Anthony's deed, but he was awed in
spite of himself and lowered his club and bent his back, shedding tears
of disappointment.
Who would profane a temple or destroy a shrine?
Certainly not Anthony, who had fled to it for sanctuary. The loveliness
of the manitou's cascade and the power of its fall were as plain to
him as to the savages. Why, then, should not the deity inspire him to
prophecy as though he were a votary?
He had sacrificed himself to make the discovery of such useful natural
features of the Great River as this waterfall might prove to be. Let it
now reward him with a new lease on life that he might give his find to
the Empire.
He thought of the brook in Picardy and of the wheels it set to going
and he cried in ecstasy to this current of so much greater size:
"Some day, O laughing Water, white men shall put a harness upon you
and drive you to work at turning a mill." His fancy set big factories
up and down the shore. Yet his dream-workshops were not as huge as the
immense roller-mills which now stand in substantial piles, row upon
row, where once his imagination builded.
"Over these fertile lands of your sky-blue lakes shall spring up the
white man's wheat." It was easy for him to think of the Mississippi
shores dotted with farms; the valley conquered by the plow. But he
could never have believed it if any one had told him of fields of
a thousand acres each, of traction plows, of gasolene reapers, and
of steam threshers; the inventions and triumphs of the agricultural
Northwest.
"To you, O Miller-manitou, shall all the valleys bring their harvests
as food to your grindstones." He imagined a line of French donkeys
between panniers carrying wheat to the grinders. What _would_ he have
thought of a caterpillar truck and its trailers?
"Apprentices of genius shall teach you how to improve your hoppers and
your stones." The Frenchman La Croix, an employee in the early mills
along this site, proved to be, of all the clever workmen, the one who
invented most of the superior processes which make these mills, where
he studied, the models of the industrial world.
"Settlers shall crowd to your feet and towns rise around you."
He was thinking of the hamlets of Picardy or perhaps of something like
the metropolis of Amiens. Of such a capital as St. Paul or a city like
Minneapolis he had no idea.
"Old World gold shall be poured into your sacrificial basin."
One page of statistics showing the annual income of the modern mills
would have read to him, as it does to many others, like a page from
the log of a Spanish treasure ship. Anthony exaggerated the power
of the falls and the prosperity of the country to the limit of his
imagination. That they would finally both be greater than his prophesy
no sane man of his time would have dared to say.
His oration was having a fine effect upon the listening Indians. He
could see that from the corner of his eye. He was sure they would not
dare to harm him now. Although they might not understand his words, the
all-knowing manitou could, of course, and that was enough for them. As
he stepped out to join them his last words, impossible as they seemed,
were of practical business worth and part of them are still official:
"Then, O idle manitou, when you are worn down and flattened by the toil
of serving the race which tamed you, men shall forget your youthful
beauty and your sacred title, a prosaic commercial nation shall know
you only by that name with which I now take possession of you in the
name of France--all persons here present as consenting witnesses. You,
as a busy miller, shall be called for me and for my patron saint the
Falls of St. Anthony!"
Whether the explorers had done a good day's work in discovering the
wheat lands and the water to develop them, let the farmers and the
millers and the cities of Minnesota say.
Any one who noticed the gaily feathered foster-fathers and their
equally decorated sons as they trotted homeward toward the tepees,
outlined in every detail of feature and costume against the red
northern sunset, single file, toeing in, stone clubs dangling, could be
certain that a feast was in preparation and that he saw six satisfied
Sioux.
IV
HUNTERS ALL
A Chase of the Buffalo Herds in the Prairie Tribes of Michael
Accau--Flight of the Fur Traders
ONE little, two little, three little Indians, four little, five little,
six little Indians, seven little, eight little, nine little Indians,
ten little Indian boys sat in a bark tepee and yapped in chorus with
King Charles as Father Louis, holding up his friar's gown, exercised
his sandaled feet and bare shanks at a brisk pace up and down in front
of them.
As he paused for breath, "Taketchiabihen?" he demanded,
"Taketchiabihen?"
The little Indians and the dog shrilled again with the same crass
sounds. Rubbing his ears when he had had enough of this word, the friar
pulled out his note-book and jotted down some letters.
Anthony had chanced to see this performance as he came to the door
flap. His eyebrows and dimples, his curls and teeth were a whole
page of question marks and exclamation points. Père Louis answered
him as though he had spoken: "I am making a dictionary of the Sioux
language. This is the word for _run_," and he showed the unspellable
and unpronounceable yelp with which the children had answered his
hiccoughing, "What is this?"
As the friar mopped his forehead Anthony's brows came down and his
smile widened. "How did you manage to get them to help you?" he
inquired.
Father Louis sighed as he explained: "When the mothers saw me use my
razor they decided that the steel edge would shave the heads of the
boys better than the sharp hot stones they had always used for that
purpose. I am not allowed my dinner until I tonsure these fledgling
braves all around their scalp-locks. In my turn I will not shave them
until they tell me some new words. By reciprocity, then, does the
dictionary grow. Some day I may be able to converse in the language of
the Sioux. I can already understand something of what will be said to
me by the gentleman yonder." He indicated a warped red thief who had
put a pair of wretched legs through the armholes of the friar's elegant
chasuble and was wearing it upside down. It was fastened comfortably in
this position by a pair of suspenders made of the Franciscan cord.
Anthony was scandalized. But Father Louis had become resigned to slight
mishaps like stolen clothes; too many worse things had happened in the
three months of his captivity.
He led Anthony to another irregular hut, where the boy was placed
side by side with the over-dressed person in the semi-religious
style of suit. The friar was needed to baptize a sick papoose. The
Père Louis' tolerance and sense of duty so affected Anthony that his
awkward arms were very gentle. He was filled with pity and quite forgot
the grotesque figure beside him in helping the tiny dying creature
under his hands. He could not find it in his heart to object when the
grateful friar named the child Antoinette in honor of her pale-face
godfather.
Father Louis went promptly to the next business in hand, "Do you,
Anthony, please keep the children out of mischief for a minute while
I pack," he said. Anthony, half crying in sorrow for the expiring
child and half laughing in disgust at the living ones, got his pocket
compass. The magnetic needle was the one thing that scared the little
Indians into decent behavior. Their fathers had told them it was a
magic spirit which guided the white men over lands where no trails led.
All the Sioux, large and small, quaked before its quivering point.
By its threat the meddlesome hands were warned away from the friar's
sleeves whose pocket cuffs were the only trunks he carried. He was
going with Anthony to join a concourse of the Sioux hunters setting out
in pursuit of buffalo.
News that the migrating herds were coming their way had set the
Indians, now very short of food, into a frenzy of preparation. Away
they all went in a bedlam, men and women, children and dogs, to the
shores of the Great River, where they rioted in the camps by night and
chased the buffalo on the outlying plains by day.
Every woman had her own pottery cooking-vessel. Savory stew was served
at any hour in the twenty-four. Surplus meat was dried in the smoke of
her smudges as she "jerked" it for future use.
Each child took part in this annual event. The tenth little Indian, the
smallest hunter that ever stood in moccasins, had his own arrows and a
buffalo calf for practice.
Pelts piled up like bales. Accau counted them by dozens.
If any one had told Anthony that in the beginning of the twentieth
century a North American Indian of the Carlisle School would hold the
world's record for all-around athletic prowess he certainly would
have nodded that he believed it. "Day after day," he said, "the lithe
Narrhetoba, with a single bow, set his nimble feet to the sport of
running down a buffalo and his deft hands to the game of slaying it by
means of a stone-tipped arrow. That is more than I can do."
It was _too_ easy for that active chieftain. He was bored with the
old-fashioned exercise. He longed for the white man's steel and the new
sensations to come in using a gun.
The friar and Anthony proposed to him, "Allow us to take a canoe and go
down to the mouth of the Wisconsin in search of the traders the Sieur
La Salle had promised to send after us." Both Narrhetoba and Ouasicoude
agreed to do this. So Anthony and Père Louis slipped quietly away.
Accau stayed as hostage. He had a faint hope of retrieving some of his
goods in the possession of these people, or, what was better, to get in
place of his trinkets a cargo of buffalo-skins. His business eye saw
the pelts growing in value during the hunt. Even the littlest Indian's
calf-skin would be worth money _if_ he caught it. And the bereaved
parent who had shed the chasuble but kept the handy Franciscan cord
acquired a sumptuous collection which Accau coveted.
"The capitals of Europe are clamoring for pelts from the New World. The
princes and nobility of civilization admire the soft skins with which
savages adorned themselves," he repeated over and over.
"The fur trade of the colonies promised to make the mother country
rich. Ever since those daring young adventurers, the Sieurs De Radisson
and Groseilliers, plunged into the northwestern wilds in 1654 and at
the end of two years came out again in spectacular parade with three
hundred Algonquins and sixty canoes, bringing forty thousand dollars'
worth of pelts, all fortune-hunters had been eager to do something of
the same kind."