THE BLACK GOWN
In the valley of the Mississippi it was summer again. Father Marquette,
still sick, had not come back to the Illinois tribes. The Peorias and
Kaskaskias, in their two villages on the Illinois River, lived
comfortable, happy lives, for theirs was a beautiful and fertile valley
in these sunny summer months. In the rich soil of the prairies the
Indian women had planted seeds which had been carefully preserved from
the year before. And now in the fields the young girls were working
among the long rows of Indian corn and tending the bean-vines. In their
season melons and squashes grew plentifully. The woods along the river
were full of game; and in the quiet water of the Illinois, fish by the
hundred swam to and fro, an easy target for the swift-winged arrow of
the Indian youth. Far back on the plains roamed great herds of buffalo,
which afforded both sport and food for the Indians. When fall came, the
Indians would surround a herd of buffalo and then set fire to the
prairie, taking care to leave an open space by which the frightened
animals could escape. As the big animals passed out through this break
in the circle of fire, they were easily shot by the Indian hunters.
All up and down the river and over on the Lake of the Illinois, the
winter of 1674 fell upon the land with stinging fierceness. The air was
so cold that it was almost brittle. The winds howled and swept through
the valley with gusts that drove the Indians chilled to their firesides;
while the snow, as it piled higher and higher, often brought despair to
the men scattered far and wide on their long winter hunts. Sometimes the
deer were so lean as to be scarcely worth the shooting. From the
Mississippi to the cold shores of the Lakes the men of the Illinois
tribes were hunting and trapping and trading furs.
One day during this bleak winter there came striding into the village of
the Kaskaskias an Indian of great note among the Illinois. He was
Chassagoac, the famous Kaskaskia chief and fur trader. Having just come
from the upper shores of Lake Michigan, he reported that near Green Bay
he had come upon Father Marquette with two Frenchmen, setting out at
last for the villages of the Illinois. Coming into camp with a deer on
his back, he had shared his meat with these white men and on the next
day had set out with them down the west shore of the Lake. The
courageous priest was still far from well, but he was determined to keep
his promise to the Illinois Indians. Accompanied by a number of Illinois
men who were out on the winter hunt, and by the Illinois women who had
packed the canoes and equipments across the portage from Green Bay to
the Lake, the party made their way slowly southward along the shore.
Father Marquette spent part of the time teaching the Indians; while his
two men, Pierre and Jacques, mended the guns of the Indian hunters and
went out with them in search of game. Their canoes were too frail to
stand much of the weather that now hung about the edge of the Lake.
Floating ice drove them ashore again and again. Rain, sleet, and fierce,
chilling winds kept them off the water for days at a time, while deep
snows impeded their progress on land.
Early in December, they reached the mouth of the Chicago River, where,
moving inland a few leagues, the white men built a rude cabin and made
ready to encamp for the winter. Marquette still suffered greatly and
could go no farther. Here Chassagoac and his Illinois followers left the
party and came on to the village; but not before they had bought of the
whites, for three fine beaver skins, a cubit of the French tobacco. Then
they had journeyed on to bring the news that the Black Gown would come
in the spring. Great was the rejoicing among the Illinois.
Weeks had passed when Jacques, the priest’s servant, came to one of the
Illinois camps and told of how the Black Gown lay sick in the cabin near
the Lake. Thereupon the Indians sent back a delegation with corn and
dried meat and pumpkins and beaver skins. With these presents they asked
for powder and other merchandise. The priest replied that he had come to
encourage peace—that he did not wish them to make war upon the
Miamis—and so he could not send them powder; but he loaded them down for
their twenty-league journey with hatchets and knives and beads and
mirrors.
Now it happened that there were two white traders who had also ventured
into the land of the Illinois; and from their cabins they brought
supplies to the sick priest. One of these men, who called himself a
surgeon, stayed awhile at the lonely cabin of Marquette, glad to hear
mass and do what he could to relieve the sufferings of the black-gowned
father.
It was with exceeding great joy that the white men in their cabin near
the Lake and the Indians in their hunting-camps and villages along the
river welcomed the warmer winds from the south that broke up the ice in
the river and unlocked the wintry hold that had bound the land. Wild
animals appeared and meat became plentiful once more. The snow melted
down into rushing streams or sank into the friendly earth. As the sun
became warmer at midday, the Indian women prepared for the season of
planting.
On the 8th day of April, in the year 1675, a shout of welcome went up in
the Kaskaskia village, for the long-expected priest had come. This quiet
man, kind of face and gentle of manner, found himself among friends who
looked with sorrow at the signs of sickness graven upon his patient
face. They knew as well as he that he had not many months to live. But
they saw also upon his face a wonderful joy, for the priest had
accomplished the one great purpose that had upheld him in the weary
weeks of suffering—he had come again to preach to the Illinois Indians.
In one cabin after another the good Father spoke to the chiefs and
warriors who gathered to hear him. Finding the cabins too small, he held
a great meeting in the open air on a broad level prairie. Here the whole
village gathered. The chiefs and elders seated themselves next to the
priest; and around them stood hundreds of young Indian braves; and still
farther from the centre of the vast circle of red men were gathered the
women and children of the tribe. For a long time he talked to them, and
with each message he gave them presents after the manner of Indian
councils.
This was the last visit of the black-robed priest to the Illinois
Indians. His strength soon failed him, and with Jacques and Pierre he
started back up the river and across to the Lake, hoping against hope
that he might reach the Mission of St. Ignace at Mackinac before he
died. Friendly Indians went with them more than thirty leagues of the
way, contending with one another for the privilege of carrying his few
belongings.
Finally they reached the Lake and embarked. Jacques and Pierre paddled
the canoe along the shore, as each day the priest grew weaker. He had
always prayed that he might die like his patron saint, St. Francis
Xavier, in the far and lonely wilderness of his ministry. One Friday
evening, about the middle of May, he told his companions with great joy
that he would die on the morrow. As they passed the mouth of a small
river, Marquette, pointing to a low hill rising beside it, asked his two
men to bury him there.
They carried him ashore and built for his protection a rude cabin of
bark. There he died quietly on Saturday, May 18, 1675. He was buried by
his two men on the rising knoll which he had chosen; and over his grave
they rang his little chapel bell, and erected a rude cross to mark the
spot.
Some time later a party of Kiskakon Indians, returning from a hunting
trip, came by the site of the lonely grave. They had known Father
Marquette years before when he lived on the shores of Lake Superior. Now
they determined to carry his remains to the church at the Mission of St.
Ignace. Reverently they gathered up the precious bones, dried and
prepared them after their own Indian fashion, laid them in a box of
birch bark, and bore them in state with a convoy of thirty canoes to the
Mission at Mackinac. There in a vault of the church the remains of
Father Marquette were laid away with funeral honors; and there priests
and traders venerated his memory and Indians came to pray at his tomb.
And out in the valley of the Illinois, the tribes to whom he had made
his last pilgrimage mourned the death of their gentle-spirited visitor;
and the Peorias, as they went about their daily occupations in fields or
lodges, on the prairies or on the streams, often thought of the day in
June when the black-robed priest and his French companion had walked up
the little pathway and stood out to meet them in the glorious sunshine
at their old village on the banks of the Iowa River.