THE MYSTERIOUS HAND
The Indians of the Peoria village were interested spectators of the
events which were being acted out by the band of Frenchmen. Father
Membré lived in their town and they gave him respectful attention. Among
themselves they talked much of his white friends within the stockaded
walls of the fort. There were scarcely a dozen men with Tonty now, and
upon them the Indians looked with a mixture of curiosity, contempt, and
awe. Among them there were ship carpenters and soldiers, on some of
whose faces rascality and cowardice were written. Had the Peorias not
seen them nervous with fear while Nicanopé told them of the imaginary
terrors of the river, and at a public council, too,—what could more
clearly stamp the coward?
The old friar Ribourde shuffled about in his gray gown and bare sandaled
feet, saying mass among the Frenchmen as Membré did among the Peorias.
The strong-armed man, Le Meilleur, whom his comrade called La Forge,
swung the hammer on the red-hot iron and mended the tools of the French
at the precious forge. Down by the river, Moyse Hillaret and La Roze and
the other shipbuilders and carpenters laid out and joined together the
ribs of the huge wooden skeleton. Among these brawny men was a muscular
young lad from Paris named Renault, L’Espérance, a brave-hearted young
servant of La Salle, and Boisrondet, a man of higher birth than the rest
and a special friend of Tonty. But it was not of these men that the
Peorias talked most to the bands of hunters and warriors returning now
to the village—it was of La Salle, the white chief, who had left the
fort, and of Tonty, the man of mystery, who remained in charge of the
garrison.
The Indians could not understand the curious commander of the fort. Why
was his skin darker than that of his comrades and his hair so black—like
the hair of their own Indian women, though not so straight? But most of
all they wondered at the queer way in which he used his right hand. They
told the newly arrived Indians of the day the white men came to the
village. At the feast of welcome Tonty had used his left hand always as
he ate of their sagamite and meat, and now they watched him as he passed
here and there among his men. If he pulled a canoe up on shore or
grasped a piece of timber down at the shipyard it was never with his
right hand. Yet they had seen him deal blows with that mysterious right
hand which had the effect of an Indian war club. With what strange
“medicine” his powerful arm was gifted they could not tell; and it was
partly for that reason that they feared him. Often, in the adventurous
years that followed, red-skinned warriors in many parts of the Great
Valley were startled and awed by the ease with which this man could by
one heavy swing of his right hand break the teeth or crack the skull of
an unruly Indian.
If the Peorias could have looked off into lands they had never seen and
read the events of other times and places, as it now seemed to them that
La Salle could do, they might have found the explanation of the mystery.
Not many years before the white men came to the Peoria village, the
little island of Sicily, in the far-away Mediterranean Sea, was in the
throes of a bitter war. Along its coast grim-mouthed ships of war and
galleys, propelled by the oars of convicts and captives, bore the flags
of three nations—France, Holland, and Spain.
In one of the battles the figure of Henry de Tonty might have been seen
fighting under the flag of France. For many years he had so fought—four
campaigns on ships of war and three on galleys—and had gained high rank
in the service. But he was not of French birth. His father had come to
Paris as an exile from Naples in the sunny land of Italy after taking a
prominent part in the Neapolitan Revolt of 1647. Sicily like Naples had
long been under the hated rule of Spain, and now the Sicilians rising in
revolt had called upon the French for help. The Spaniards, hard pressed,
called a Dutch fleet in to aid them. So the war was waged, now on sea,
now on land; and Tonty, in the thick of the battle, rejoiced in a
struggle to free men of his father’s country from the Spanish yoke.
The cannon flashed and roared. Men fell all about him. A hand grenade,
thrown by the enemy, burst near by into a thousand pieces and tore away
the right hand of Henry de Tonty. He was captured by the enemy and held
prisoner for six months. Then he was released in exchange for the
governor’s son. In place of his lost member he substituted a hand of
metal which he wore encased in a glove. But now peace had settled upon
the Mediterranean, and the restless Tonty joined La Salle and came
across the sea to where the land was young and adventure lay in every
river valley.
In time the Indians learned the story of his “medicine” arm; and
throughout the Great Valley, from the Lakes to the mouth of the
Mississippi, Tonty came to be known to the tribes as the “Man with the
Iron Hand.”