THE CAPTIVE RELEASED
It was about the middle of July, 1673, when the Arkansas Indians saw the
band of white men leave their village to start out upon the return
voyage. The weeks that followed their departure from the Arkansas town
were full of toil for the voyagers; for now in the heat of summer they
must paddle against the current of the greatest of American rivers. At
length, coming to the mouth of the Illinois and believing that it
offered a shorter route than the one by which they had come, they turned
into its waters and paddled up its smooth stream toward the Lake.
In the course of this journey up the Illinois River they came one day,
with great surprise, to a village in whose lodges lived the same Peoria
Indians whom they had last seen on the other side of the Mississippi, in
the town on the bank of the Iowa River. The Peorias, too, were surprised
to see the seven white men and the Indian boy come paddling up the
stream.
Here the tired voyagers were welcomed with such hospitality that they
lingered for three days in the village. The Indian boy renewed old
acquaintances, while Marquette passed from lodge to lodge, telling the
Indians of the God of the French who had guarded them in their long
journey and protected them from pestilence and the disasters of the
river, and from torture and murder by hostile tribes of Indians. The
Peorias in turn told the priest of their brother tribes along the
Illinois River and of the wars they waged together against the Sacs and
Foxes of the North and the bands of Iroquois from the East. But as they
looked into the face of the priest, they saw lines of suffering and
sickness, and they knew that he had not borne with ease the long and
arduous trip.
When the voyagers made ready to depart, the Indians gathered at the
river bank to bid them good-bye. As they were about to embark, some
Indians brought to the edge of the stream a sick child and asked Father
Marquette to baptize it. With great joy the priest complied, for it was
the first and, indeed, the only baptism on the whole summer’s voyage. A
few minutes later the little child died.
The canoes were then pushed into the stream, the men dipped their
paddles, and, rounding a point of land a short distance up the stream,
disappeared from view. The group of Indians turned back to the village,
bearing the body of the dead child. They wrapped it tenderly in the
skins of wild animals and laid it away on a scaffold of poles high above
the reach of prowling wolves.
* * * * *
Autumn came upon the land and through the fallen leaves along the shore
the young Indians passed back and forth among the villages on the
Illinois. From the Kaskaskias, who dwelt farther up the river, the
Peorias learned that Marquette and Joliet had stopped at the upper
village, and that the black robe had promised to come again and preach
to them. Moreover, when they left this village, one of the chiefs of the
nation, with a band of his own men, went with them up the river, across
the portage, and as far as the Lake of the Illinois—as they then called
Lake Michigan. There they left the white men paddling valiantly up the
west shore toward Green Bay and the Jesuit Mission of St. Francis
Xavier.
At Green Bay, Marquette stopped with his brother priests and tried to
gain strength enough to return to the Illinois villages. But Joliet went
farther. Taking the Indian lad with him, he journeyed as far as the
settlement at the Straits of Mackinac. There the young Indian spent such
a winter as he had never known before. About him were the great log
lodges of the French; and in the streets of the little town walked men
of strange and curious ways. There were dark-bearded traders, priests
with black robes and cowls, trappers and _coureurs de bois_ in blanket
coats, and fur caps; and Indians, from about the Great Lakes, gathered
there to sell furs and buy the white man’s guns and liquor.
The Indian boy soon began to understand and talk the language of the
white men, and by the end of the winter he could even read and write a
little in French. He was quick to learn the ways of the Frenchmen; and
his many attractive qualities endeared him to Joliet.
When the spring of 1674 came on, Joliet and several Frenchmen embarked
in a canoe and began the descent of the Great Lakes. They were bound for
the home of the governor of New France at Quebec, high on the rocks
beside the St. Lawrence. As a gift to the governor, Joliet was taking
the Indian boy who had shared his wanderings in the Great Valley.
Joliet and his companions were weeks upon the journey, paddling steadily
by lake shore and river, through straits and past wooded islands. Only
once were they compelled to carry their canoe over a portage. At last
they came near to the town of Montreal, with the high hill rising up
behind it. They were nearly home now, and the heart of Joliet must have
leaped high as he thought of the long months he had spent on his
perilous journey. Soon he would come in triumph before Frontenac,
governor of Canada, and tell him of his explorations and put into his
hands his map and papers and the precious journal of his voyage. These
documents lay beside him in the bottom of the canoe in a box, together
with some relics of the far-away valley of the Mississippi.
Only La Chine Rapids—the Sault St. Louis as they were then called—lay
between the voyagers and Montreal, and then the road was clear and
smooth to the high rock of Quebec. The canoe entered the swift-running
water. Foam-covered rocks swept past them. Many a time had Joliet passed
through these rapids. Probably, after all the perils through which he
had safely come on the Great River, he looked only with joy upon this
familiar rush of waters. Perhaps to the Indian boy came the thought of
the demon whom his people feared in the surging waters of the
Mississippi. Surely another such demon lived in this troubled passage,
with death in its relentless grasp.
As if to prove real the fears of the Indian, the demon of the water
reached out a great wet arm and overturned the frail canoe. Tossed into
the fierce current were Joliet and his French boatmen, the Indian boy,
and the precious box of papers; while downstream went blindly bobbing
the bark canoe. Wildly the men struggled in the rushing stream, the
current all the while wrenching at their legs and playing with their
feeble efforts. Joliet fought till the breath was gone from his lungs
and the strength from his limbs. Then he lost consciousness.
The unpitying sun made a long arc in the heavens above the tossing human
bodies. Four hours had Joliet been in the water when fishermen pulled
him out on shore and brought him back to life. Two of his men were
drowned; and his precious box of papers lay somewhere beneath the
rushing waters.
And the Indian boy? He, too, had given up to the evil spirit of the
rapids. No more would he pass like a waif from tribe to tribe; no longer
would he try with eyes and tongue and fingers to learn the ways of his
new white friends. Forever he had left the rolling hills and streams of
the Great Valley, the green prairies so full of sunshine, and the woods
so full of game. He had passed to the happy hunting-ground of his
people.