THE SCATTERING OF THE TRIBES
Throughout the fight Tonty’s life hung upon a thread. An impetuous
Onondaga had stabbed him in the side, but fortunately the knife had
glanced from a rib. Another Indian seized him by the hair; and a third
raised his hat upon a gun. Then one of the chiefs recognized him as a
white man and intervened. He was carried into the midst of the camp,
where the chiefs gathered about him and heard his plea for peace. The
Illinois, said Tonty, were just as much the friends of the governor of
Canada as were the Iroquois. Why should the Iroquois make war upon them?
It was an unquiet parley. Behind Tonty stood an Indian warrior with
ready knife; and now and then as they talked he wound his fingers in the
white man’s hair and raised his black locks as if to scalp him. Outside
of the circle the fight went on. Then came the report that Iroquois men
were killed and wounded and that the left side was yielding. Dismayed,
the chiefs asked their white captive how many men were in the fight.
Tonty, seeing a chance to prevent hostilities, replied that there were
twelve hundred Illinois and that fifty Frenchmen were fighting with
them. Overcome with consternation at these figures, the chiefs hastened
to give Tonty the present of wampum and beg him to make peace for the
Iroquois.
The Illinois with their wounded white leader and his two men turned back
to the village. A league from home they came upon Father Membré hurrying
out to meet them. The sound of guns had brought him from his cabin in
the fields back of the town. They crossed the river together, and Tonty
was glad enough to lie down in one of the lodges and let the priest and
young men tend his wound.
Scarcely had the Illinois reached their lodges when, looking back, they
saw little groups of Iroquois on the other side of the river. A few of
these soon found means of crossing, and they hovered near the village in
a pretense of seeking food. But the Illinois, who were not children in
the art of Indian warfare, were well aware of the ways of the
treacherous Iroquois, and they watched these straggling bands with
gloomy foreboding.
By a magnificent sally the Illinois had daunted their enemy, and Tonty’s
exaggeration of their numbers had completed the impression of their
power in the minds of the Iroquois. But the Illinois well knew that they
were no match for the Iroquois with their abundance of arms and
ammunition and their allies, the Miamis. Sooner or later the Iroquois
would learn the true numbers of the villagers. Then the fierce warriors
of the Five Nations would harry them until they found an opportunity to
crush them out of existence. Massacres, tortures, and burnings could be
their only possible end if they stayed in the village. After their
warriors were slain, what of the women and children, anxiously waiting
in the secluded refuge down the river?
Tonty and his men were probably safe, for the Iroquois had too much fear
of the French in Canada to harm them without great provocation. But the
Illinois were not safe. So they deserted their village, took to their
pirogues, and passed downstream to join their wives and old men.
In their hearts the Indians saw the wisdom of flight, for they knew what
had happened in the past. They did not forget the fate of other nations
whom the Iroquois had practically exterminated. Would the invasion of
the Illinois country have any other end? Yet it was with heavy and
reluctant hearts that they gave up their lodges to the hated foe; and
bands of warriors trailed back up the river for another look at their
one-time home. Appearing on the hills a short distance behind the
village they gazed down upon the ruined lodges which had been fired by
the Iroquois, who had piled timber and half-burned posts in the form of
a rude fort. In a lodge some distance away Tonty had been left still
suffering from his wound and attended by his five men.
More and more of the Illinois gathered on the hill, until the array of
warriors alarmed the Iroquois, who still nursed the belief that twelve
hundred Illinois were haunting their rear. The Illinois continued their
watch day by day and presently saw two men leave the town and climb the
hill toward them. They soon distinguished the peculiar swing of their
friend Tonty. With him was an Iroquois Indian. Joyfully they welcomed
him and listened to his message. The Iroquois wished to make a treaty of
peace and had sent one of their men as a hostage.
The Illinois in turn sent back with Tonty one of their own young men,
and negotiations were soon begun. But the peacemaker had been badly
chosen, for the young Indian, eager for a treaty of peace, promised
everything and finally revealed to the Iroquois the true number of the
Illinois warriors. The Iroquois said little to the Illinois messenger,
but sent him back to his people that night to tell the chiefs to come
next day within half a league of the fort and conclude the peace. Then
they turned on Tonty with wrath and reproaches for having deceived them.
The next day at noon Illinois and Iroquois met not far from the village.
The Iroquois, hiding their true plans, gave presents to their late
opponents and bound themselves to a firm and lasting peace. But Tonty,
who was not misled, managed to send Father Membré to the Illinois to
tell them that the peace was only a pretense, that the Iroquois were
making elm-bark canoes, and that if the Illinois did not flee at once
they would be followed and their whole tribe massacred.
At night the Iroquois called Tonty and Father Membré into the rude fort,
and having seated the white leader they laid before him presents
consisting of six bundles of valuable beaver skins. By the first two
presents the Iroquois meant to inform Governor Frontenac that they would
not eat his children and that he should not be angry at what they had
done. The third bundle of skins was to be a plaster for the white man’s
wound. The fourth represented oil to be rubbed on the white men’s limbs
because of the long journeys they had taken. With the fifth they told
Tonty how bright the sun was; and with the sixth they said that he
should profit by it and return the next day to the French settlements.
“When are you going to leave the Illinois country?” asked the dauntless
white man.
“Not until we have eaten these Illinois,” replied the angered chiefs.
With a quick motion of his foot Tonty kicked the beaver skins from
him—an unpardonable offense among Indians. Angry looks and
gesticulations from the Indians greeted this act, but they hesitated to
lay hands upon Tonty for he was a friend of Frontenac, the powerful
governor of New France. Perhaps, too, they realized, better even than
did the Illinois, the power of his heavy right hand, for he had lived in
the land of the Iroquois before he had come out into these Western
wilds.
Scarcely restraining themselves, they drove the two men from the fort.
Tonty and the friar returned to their comrades at their lodge. No longer
was their presence in the Iroquois camp useful to the Illinois or safe
for themselves. Hardly expecting to see the dawn, they passed the night
on guard resolved to sell their lives as dearly as possible. But they
were not molested, and when day came they embarked for the far-off
settlements. They were the last white men to leave the valley of the
Illinois where carnage and woe were to reign.
The journey of Tonty and his companions was a difficult one, and
calamity met them early on the way. After some five hours’ paddling,
they stopped to mend their canoe. The old friar Ribourde went off in the
woods a little distance to pray, and was set upon and murdered by a
roving band of Kickapoos. After searching for him in vain, the rest of
his party went on. By short journeys they reached the Lake of the
Illinois and turned northward. Winter overtook them; their food gave
out; and they fell to eating acorns and grubbing up roots from beneath
the snow. When their moccasins wore out,—for most of their travel was
now by land,—they made themselves shoes out of a cloak which the
murdered friar had left behind. Weeks passed by as they journeyed on.
They came now and then upon deserted Indian camps, and, desperate with
hunger, they tried to eat the leather thongs which bound together the
poles of the Indian lodges. They even chewed the tough rawhide of an old
Indian shield which they had found. Tonty was sick almost constantly
with fever and scarcely able to walk. Not until December did the party
of five men reach Green Bay, where at last they were given a warm
welcome by the Indians and some Frenchmen in a Pottawattomie village.
Back in the valley of the Illinois, after the departure of the little
group of French from the village, all pretense at peace was cast aside,
and Iroquois fury turned itself loose. The Illinois had gone, leaving
them only a deserted village, on which they wreaked their vengeance.
Having destroyed the lodges by fire, they dug up the caches of corn and
burned and scattered the contents. Then they moved on to the village
graveyard and tore down from the scaffolds the bodies that had been left
there for a time before burial. From the graves of the village they dug
up the long-buried relatives of the departed inhabitants, and scattered
the bones in every direction. Out of pure fiendishness they despoiled
this most sacred spot in the Indian town. On the half-burned poles of
the lodges they hung skulls for the crows to pick. Then they followed
the fleeing Illinois down the river.
The Illinois gathered again at the place where their women and children
had taken refuge. It was a long narrow bit of land on the north bank of
the river. Between it and solid ground was a heavy, muddy swamp across
which only a four-foot path of firm ground was to be found. On this
semi-island, half a league in length and but fifteen or twenty paces
wide, the women had built temporary lodges. Only from the water side
could attack be made, and here they piled up their pirogues in the form
of a wall.
The Iroquois, following close after, camped on the shore directly across
the river, where over a hundred huts were soon erected. On the bark of
near-by trees they cut the savage story of the raid, and traced rude
pictures of the chiefs and the number of warriors that each chief led
out. Five hundred and eighty-two braves were thus recorded. On one tree
a diagram was traced showing the scalps of the Illinois who had been
killed and the number of captives who had been taken; while on their own
record of warriors were figures represented as pierced with gunshot or
wounded with arrows.
The Illinois, terrified by the pursuit of their enemy, crossed the
narrow path to the mainland and took up their journey downstream. At
night they again camped beside the river; and soon the fires of the
Iroquois camp shot up from the other shore. Another day’s march, and
again two camps appeared at night on opposite banks. The Iroquois, who
did not yet dare to make an attack, hung on the flanks of the Illinois
like a pack of cowardly wolves.
The Illinois traveled slowly, for they were greatly impeded by the women
and children and old men, and food must be gathered by the way. But just
as slowly and deliberately followed the Iroquois. Occasionally they
tried to put the Illinois off their guard by offerings of peace; but the
Illinois were wary. The two armies, marching side by side with only the
river between, passed Peoria Lake, and the men of the Peoria village
crossed over and joined their brethren. When the Iroquois came to the
deserted ruins of Fort Crèvecœur below the village, they stopped long
enough to pull the nails out of the timbers of the skeleton of the boat
by the water’s edge.
Day after day the Illinois and Iroquois walked beside the river. Night
after night camp-fires faced each other across the waters. On the way
the Illinois had gathered many of their tribes together. The Peorias,
the Cahokias, the Moingwenas, the Tamaroas, and several minor tribes had
joined the moving army like parts of a rolling snowball. If only they
were armed with guns and free from their wives and children, they might
strike a blow that the Iroquois would long remember. But wiser counsels
prevented such a move.
It became more and more difficult to find food for so many; and as they
neared the Mississippi River they longed to separate and go off each
tribe to its own hunting-ground. They held a parley with the enemy
across the river, and a truce was declared. Then the Illinois tribes
separated. The Moingwenas with several of the smaller tribes went down
the Mississippi; the Peorias crossed to the western side; while the
Kaskaskias and Cahokias preferred to go up the river toward the land of
the Sioux. But the Tamaroas, most luckless of all, lingered near the
mouth of the Illinois River. It was the opportunity for which the
Iroquois had waited, for their long-time policy had been to “divide and
conquer.” Such had been their plan when they came into the valley,
separating the Miamis from the Illinois and falling upon the latter.
As soon as the other tribes were out of the way, the Iroquois attacked
the Tamaroas. That feeble tribe fled in terror. Some of the men escaped,
while the rest were massacred. Along the margin of the Illinois, not far
from its mouth, was an open meadow; and here were enacted scenes such as
had long made the Iroquois hated and feared. The captives were put to
horrible torments: some were roasted to death, some skinned alive. The
nerves and sinews of some were torn out; and when their tortures had
done their work, the heads and even whole bodies of women and children
were placed upon upright poles and upon stakes driven into the ground.