1680.
TONTY AND THE IROQUOIS.
THE DESERTERS.--THE IROQUOIS WAR.--THE GREAT TOWN OF THE ILLINOIS.
--THE ALARM.--ONSET OF THE IROQUOIS.--PERIL OF TONTY.--A TREACHEROUS
TRUCE.--INTREPIDITY OF TONTY.--MURDER OF RIBOURDE.--WAR UPON THE DEAD.
When La Salle set out on his rugged journey to Fort Frontenac, he left, as
we have seen, fifteen men at Fort Crèvecoeur,--smiths, ship-carpenters,
housewrights, and soldiers, besides his servant l'Esperance and the two
friars Membré and Ribourde. Most of the men were ripe for mutiny. They had
no interest in the enterprise, and no love for its chief. They were
disgusted at the present, and terrified at the future. La Salle, too, was
for the most part a stern commander, impenetrable and cold; and when he
tried to soothe, conciliate, and encourage, his success rarely answered to
the excellence of his rhetoric. He could always, however, inspire respect,
if not love; but now the restraint of his presence was removed. He had not
been long absent, when a firebrand was thrown into the midst of the
discontented and restless crew.
It may be remembered that La Salle had met two of his men, La Chapelle and
Leblanc, at his fort on the St. Joseph, and ordered them to rejoin Tonty.
Unfortunately, they obeyed. On arriving, they told their comrades that the
"Griffin" was lost, that Fort Frontenac was seized by the creditors of La
Salle, that he was ruined past recovery, and that they, the men, would
never receive their pay. Their wages were in arrears for more than two
years; and, indeed, it would have been folly to pay them before their
return to the settlements, as to do so would have been a temptation to
desert. Now, however, the effect on their minds was still worse,
believing, as many of them did, that they would never be paid at all.
La Chapelle and his companion had brought a letter from La Salle to Tonty,
directing him to examine and fortify the cliff so often mentioned, which
overhung the river above the great Illinois village. Tonty, accordingly,
set out on his errand with some of the men. In his absence, the
malcontents destroyed the fort, stole powder, lead, furs, and provisions,
and deserted, after writing on the side of the unfinished vessel the words
seen by La Salle, "_Nous sommes tous sauvages_." [Footnote: For the
particulars of this desertion, Membré, in Le Clerc, ii. 171, _Relation des
Découvertes_, MS.; Tonty, _Mémoire_, MS.; _Déclaration faite par devant le
Sr. Duchesneau, Intendant en Canada, par Moyse Hillaret, charpentier de
barque cy-devant au service du Sr. de la Salle_, 17 _Aoust_, 1680, MS.
Moyse Hillaret, the "Maitre Moyse" of Hennepin, was a ringleader of the
deserters, and seems to have been one of those captured by La Salle near
Fort Frontenac. Twelve days after, Hillaret was examined by La Salle's
enemy, the Intendant; and this paper is the formal statement made by him.
It gives the names of most of the men, and furnishes incidental
confirmation of many statements of Hennepin, Tonty, Membré, and the
_Relation des Découvertes_. Hillaret, Leblanc, and Le Meilleur, the
blacksmith nicknamed La Forge, went off together, and the rest seem to
have followed afterwards. Hillaret does not admit that any goods were
wantonly destroyed.
There is before me a schedule of the debts of La Salle, made after his
death. It includes a claim of this man for wages to the amount of 2,500
livres.] The brave young Sieur de Boisrondet and the servant l'Esperance
hastened to carry the news to Tonty, who at once despatched four of those
with him, by two different routes, to inform La Salle of the disaster.
[Footnote: Two of the messengers, Laurent and Messier, arrived safely. The
others seem to have deserted.] Besides the two just named, there now
remained with him only three hired men and the Récollet friars. With this
feeble band, he was left among a horde of treacherous savages, who had
been taught to regard him as a secret enemy. Resolved, apparently, to
disarm their jealousy by a show of confidence, he took up his abode in the
midst of them, making his quarters in the great village, whither, as
spring opened, its inhabitants returned, to the number, according to
Membré, of seven or eight thousand. Hither he conveyed the forge and such
tools as he could recover, and here he hoped to maintain, himself till La
Salle should reappear. The spring and the summer were past, and he looked
anxiously for his coming, unconscious that a storm was gathering in the
east, soon to burst with devastation over the fertile wilderness of the
Illinois.
I have recounted the ferocious triumphs of the Iroquois in another volume.
[Footnote: "The Jesuits in America."] Throughout a wide semicircle around
their cantons they had made the forest a solitude,--destroyed the Hurons,
exterminated the Neutrals and the Eries, reduced the formidable Andastes
to a helpless insignificance, swept the borders of the St. Lawrence with
fire, spread terror and desolation among the Algonquins of Canada; and
now, tired of peace, they were seeking, to borrow their own savage
metaphor, new nations to devour. Yet it was not alone their homicidal fury
that now impelled them to another war. Strange as it may seem, this war
was in no small measure one of commercial advantage. They had long traded
with the Dutch and English of New York, who gave them, in exchange for
their furs, the guns, ammunition, knives, hatchets, kettles, beads, and
brandy which had become indispensable to them. Game was scarce in their
country. They must seek their beaver and other skins in the vacant
territories of the tribes they had destroyed; but this did not content
them. The French of Canada were seeking to secure a monopoly of the furs
of the north and west; and, of late, the enterprises of La Salle on the
tributaries of the Mississippi had especially roused the jealousy of the
Iroquois, fomented, moreover, by Dutch and English traders. [Footnote:
Duchesneau, in _Paris Docs_., ix. 163.] These crafty savages would fain
reduce all these regions to subjection, and draw from thence an
exhaustless supply of furs to be bartered for English goods with the
traders of Albany. They turned their eyes first towards the Illinois, the
most important, as well as one of the most accessible, of the western
Algonquin tribes; and among La Salle's enemies were some in whom jealousy
of a hated rival could so far override all the best interests of the
colony that they did not scruple to urge on the Iroquois to an invasion
which they hoped would prove his ruin. The chiefs convened, war was
decreed, the war-dance was danced, the war-song sung, and five hundred
warriors began their march. In their path lay the town of the Miamis,
neighbors and kindred of the Illinois. It was always their policy to
divide and conquer; and these forest Machiavels had intrigued so well
among the Miamis, working craftily on their jealousy, that they induced
them to join in the invasion, though there is every reason to believe that
they had marked these infatuated allies as their next victims. [Footnote:
There had long been a rankling jealousy between the Miamis and the
Illinois. According to Membré, La Salle's enemies had intrigued
successfully among the former, as well as among the Iroquois, to induce
them to take arms against the Illinois.]
Go to the banks of the Illinois where it flows by the village of Utica,
and stand on the meadow that borders it on the north. In front glides the
river, a musket-shot in width; and from the farther bank rises, with
gradual slope, a range of wooded hills that hide from sight the vast
prairie behind them. A mile or more on your left these gentle acclivities
end abruptly in the lofty front of the great cliff, called by the French
the Rock of St. Louis, looking boldly out from the forests that environ
it; and, three miles distant on your right, you discern a gap in the steep
bluffs that here bound the valley, marking the mouth of the River
Vermilion, called Aramoni by the French. [Footnote: The above is from
notes made on the spot. The following is La Salle's description of the
locality in the _Relation des Découvertes_, written in 1681: "La rive
gauche de la rivière, du coté du sud, est occupée par un long rocher, fort
étroit et escarpé presque partout, à la réserve d'un endroit de plus d'une
lieue de longueur, situé vis-à-vis du village, ou le terrain, tout couvert
de beaux chênes, s'étend par une pente douce jusqu'au bord de la rivière.
Au delà de cette hauteur est une vaste plaine, qui s'étend bien loin du
coté du sud, et qui est traversée par la rivière Aramoni, dont les bords
sont couverts d'une lisière de bois peu large."
The Aramoni is laid down on the great manuscript map of Franquelin, 1684,
and on the map of Coronelli, 1688. It is, without doubt, the Big
Vermilion. Starved Rock, or the Rock of St. Louis, is the highest and
steepest escarpment of the _long rocher_ above mentioned.] Now stand in
fancy on this same spot in the early autumn of the year 1680. You are in
the midst of the great town of the Illinois,--hundreds of mat-covered
lodges and thousands of congregated savages. Enter one of their dwellings:
they will not think you an intruder. Some friendly squaw will lay a mat
for you by the fire; you may seat yourself upon it, smoke your pipe, and
study the lodge and its inmates by the light that streams through the
holes at the top. Three or four fires smoke and smoulder on the ground
down the middle of the long arched structure; and as to each fire there
are two families, the place is somewhat crowded when all are present. But
now there is space and breathing room, for many are in the fields. A squaw
sits weaving a mat of rushes; a warrior, naked, except his moccasons, and
tattooed with fantastic devices, binds a stone arrow-head to its shaft
with the fresh sinews of a buffalo. Some lie asleep, some sit staring in
vacancy, some are eating, some are squatted in lazy chat around a fire.
The smoke brings water to your eyes; the fleas annoy you; small unkempt
children, naked as young puppies, crawl about your knees and will not be
repelled. You have seen enough. You rise and go out again into the
sunlight. It is, if not a peaceful, at least a languid scene. A few voices
break the stillness, mingled with the joyous chirping of crickets from the
grass. Young men lie flat on their faces, basking in the sun. A group of
their elders are smoking around a buffalo skin on which they have just
been playing a game of chance with cherry-stones. A lover and his
mistress, perhaps, sit together under a shed of bark without uttering a
word. Not far off is the graveyard, where lie the dead of the village,
some buried in the earth, some wrapped in skins and laid aloft on
scaffolds, above the reach of wolves. In the cornfields around, you see
squaws at their labor, and children driving off intruding birds; and your
eye ranges over the meadows beyond, spangled with the yellow blossoms of
the resin-weed and the Rudbeckia, or over the bordering hills still green
with the foliage of summer. [Footnote: The Illinois were an aggregation of
distinct though kindred tribes, the Kaskaskias, the Peorias, the Cahokias,
the Tamaroas, the Moingona, and others. Their general character and habits
were those of other Indian tribes, but they were reputed somewhat cowardly
and slothful. In their manners, they were more licentious than many of
their neighbors, and addicted to practices which are sometimes supposed to
be the result of a perverted civilization. Young men enacting the part of
women were frequently to be seen among them. These were held in great
contempt. Some of the early travellers, both among the Illinois and among
other tribes, where the same practice prevailed, mistook them for
hermaphrodites. According to Charlevoix (_Journal Historique_, 303), this
abuse was due in part to a superstition. The Miamis and Piankishaws were
in close affinities of language and habits with the Illinois. All these
tribes belonged to the great Algonquin family. The first impressions which
the French received of them, as recorded in the _Relation_ of 1671, were
singularly favorable; but a closer acquaintance did not confirm them. The
Illinois traded with the lake tribes, to whom they carried slaves taken in
war, receiving in exchange, guns, hatchets, and other French goods.--
Marquette in _Relation_, 1670, 91.]
This, or something like it, one may safely affirm, was the aspect of the
Illinois village at noon of the tenth of September. [Footnote: This is
Membré's date. The narratives differ as to the day, though all agree as to
the month.] In a hut, apart from the rest, you would probably have found
the Frenchmen. Among them was a man, not strong in person, and disabled,
moreover, by the loss of a hand; yet, in this den of barbarism, betraying
the language and bearing of one formed in the most polished civilization
of Europe. This was Henri de Tonty. The others were young Boisrondet, and
the two faithful men who had stood by their commander. The friars, Membré
and Ribourde, were not in the village, but at a hut a league distant,
whither they had gone to make a "retreat," for prayer and meditation.
Their missionary labors had not been fruitful. They had made no converts,
and were in despair at the intractable character of the objects of their
zeal. As for the other Frenchmen, time, doubtless, hung heavy on their
hands; for nothing can surpass the vacant monotony of an Indian town when
there is neither hunting, nor war, nor feasts, nor dances, nor gambling,
to beguile the lagging hours.
Suddenly the village was wakened from its lethargy as by the crash of a
thunderbolt. A Shawanoe, lately here on a visit, had left his Illinois
friends to return home. He now reappeared, crossing the river in hot haste
with the announcement that he had met, on his way, an army of Iroquois
approaching to attack them. All was panic and confusion. The lodges
disgorged their frightened inmates; women and children screamed, startled
warriors snatched their weapons. There were less than five hundred of
them, for the greater part of the young men had gone to war. A crowd of
excited savages thronged about Tonty and his Frenchmen, already objects of
their suspicion, charging them, with furious gesticulation, with having
stirred up their enemies to invade them. Tonty defended himself in broken
Illinois, but the naked mob were but half convinced. They seized the forge
and tools and flung them into the river, with all the goods that had been
saved from the deserters; then, distrusting their power to defend
themselves, they manned the wooden canoes which lay in multitudes by the
bank, embarked their women and children, and paddled down the stream to
that island of dry land in the midst of marshes which La Salle afterwards
found filled with their deserted huts. Sixty warriors remained here to
guard them, and the rest returned to the village. All night long fires
blazed along the shore. The excited warriors greased their bodies, painted
their faces, befeathered their heads, sang their war-songs, danced,
stamped, yelled, and brandished their hatchets, to work up their courage
to face the crisis. The morning came, and with it came the Iroquois.
Young warriors had gone out as scouts, and now they returned. They had
seen the enemy in the line of forest that bordered the River Aramoni, or
Vermilion, and had stealthily reconnoitred them. They were very numerous,
[Footnote: The _Relation des Découvertes_ says, five hundred Iroquois and
one hundred Shawanoes. Membré says that the allies were Miamis. He is no
doubt right, as the Miamis had promised their aid, and the Shawanoes were
at peace with the Illinois. Tonty is silent on the point.] and armed for
the most part with guns, pistols, and swords. Some had bucklers of wood or
raw hide, and some wore those corselets of tough twigs interwoven with
cordage which their fathers had used when firearms were unknown. The
scouts added more, for they declared that they had seen a Jesuit among the
Iroquois; nay, that La Salle himself was there, whence it must follow that
Tonty and his men were enemies and traitors. The supposed Jesuit was but
an Iroquois chief arrayed in a black hat, doublet, and stockings; while
another, equipped after a somewhat similar fashion, passed in the distance
for La Salle. But the Illinois were furious. Tonty's life hung by a hair.
A crowd of savages surrounded him, mad with rage and terror. He had come
lately from Europe, and knew little of Indians; but, as the friar Membré
says of him, "he was full of intelligence and courage," and when they
heard him declare that he and his Frenchmen would go with them to fight
the Iroquois, their threats grew less clamorous and their eyes glittered
with a less deadly lustre.
Whooping and screeching, they ran to their canoes, crossed the river,
climbed the woody hill, and swarmed down upon the plain beyond. About a
hundred of them had guns; the rest were armed with bows and arrows. They
were now face to face with the enemy, who had emerged from the woods of
the Vermilion, and was advancing on the open prairie. With unwonted
spirit, for their repute as warriors was by no means high, the Illinois
began, after their fashion, to charge; that is, they leaped, yelled, and
shot off bullets and arrows, advancing as they did so; while the Iroquois
replied with gymnastics no less agile, and howlings no less terrific,
mingled with the rapid clatter of their guns. Tonty saw that it would go
hard with his allies. It was of the last moment to stop the fight if
possible. The Iroquois were, or professed to be, at peace with the French;
and taking counsel of his courage, he resolved on an attempt to mediate,
which may well be called a desperate one. He laid aside his gun, took in
his hand a wampum belt as a flag of truce, and walked forward to meet the
savage multitude, attended by Boisrondet, another Frenchman, and a young
Illinois who had the hardihood to accompany him. The guns of the Iroquois
still flashed thick and fast. Some of them were aimed at him, on which he
sent back the two Frenchmen and the Illinois, and advanced alone, holding
out the wampum belt. [Footnote: Membré says that he went with Tonty,
"J'étois aussi à côté du Sieur de Tonty." This is an invention of the
friar's vanity. "Les deux pères Récollets étoient alors dans une cabane à
une lieue du village, où ils s'étoient retirés pour faire une espèce de
retraite, et ils ne furent avertis de l'arrivée des Iroquois que dans le
temps du combat."--_Relation des Decouvertes,_, MS. "Je rencontrai en
chemin les pères Gabriel et Zenobe Membré, qui cherchoient de mes
nonvelles."--Tonty _Mémoire_, MS. This was on his return from the
Iroquois. The _Relation_ confirms the statement, as far as concerns
Membré: "Il rencontra le Père Zenobe (Membré), qui venoit pour le
secourir, aiant été averti du combat et de sa blessure."
The perverted _Dernières Découvertes_, published without authority, under
Tonty's name, says that he was attended by a slave whom the Illinois sent
with him as interpreter. Though this is not mentioned in the three
authentic narratives, it is more than probable, as Tonty could not have
known Iroquois enough to make himself understood.] A moment more, and he
was among the infuriated warriors. It was a frightful spectacle: the
contorted forms, bounding, crouching, twisting, to deal or dodge the shot;
the small keen eyes that shone like an angry snake's; the parted lips
pealing their fiendish yells; the painted features writhing with fear and
fury, and every passion of an Indian fight; man, wolf, and devil, all in
one. [Footnote: Being once in an encampment of Sioux, when a quarrel broke
out, and the adverse factions raised the war-whoop, and began to fire at
each other, I had a good, though for the moment, a rather dangerous
opportunity of seeing the demeanor of Indians at the beginning of a fight.
The fray was quelled before much mischief was done, by the vigorous
intervention of the elder warriors, who ran between the combatants.] With
his swarthy complexion, and his half-savage dress, they thought he was an
Indian, and thronged about him, glaring murder. A young warrior stabbed at
his heart with a knife, but the point glanced aside against a rib,
inflicting only a deep gash. A chief called out that, as his ears were not
pierced, he must be a Frenchman. On this, some of them tried to stop the
bleeding, and led him to the rear, where an angry parley ensued, while the
yells and firing still resounded in the front. Tonty, breathless, and
bleeding at the mouth with the force of the blow he had received, found
words to declare that the Illinois were under the protection of the king,
and the Governor of Canada, and to demand that they should be left in
peace. [Footnote: "Je leur fis connoistre que les Islinois étoient sous la
protection du roy de France et du gouverneur du pays, que j'estois surpris
qu'ils voulussent rompre avec les François et qu'ils voulussent _attendre_
(sic) à une paix."--Tonty, _Ménoire_, MS.]
A young Iroquois snatched Tonty's hat, placed it on the end of his gun,
and displayed it to the Illinois, who, thereupon, thinking he was killed,
renewed the fight; and the firing in front breezed up more angrily than
before. A warrior ran in, crying out that the Iroquois were giving ground,
and that there were Frenchmen among the Illinois who fired at them. On
this, the clamor around Tonty was redoubled. Some wished to kill him at
once; others resisted. Several times, he felt a hand at the back of his
head, lifting up his hair, and, turning, saw a savage with a knife,
standing as if ready to scalp him. [Footnote: "Il en avoit un derrière moi
qui tenoit un couteau dans sa main, et qui de temps en temps me levoit les
cheveux."--Tonty, _Mémoire_, MS. The _Dernières Découvertes_ adds, "Je me
retournai vers lui et je vis bien à sa contenance et à sa mine que son
dessein étoit de m'enlever la chevelure ... je le priai de vouloir du
moins se donner un peu de patience, et d'attendre que ses Maitres eussent
décidé de mon sort."] A Seneca chief demanded that he should be burned. An
Onondaga chief, a friend of La Salle, was for setting him free. The
dispute grew fierce and hot. Tonty told them that the Illinois were twelve
hundred strong, and that sixty Frenchmen were at the village, ready to
back them. This invention, though not fully believed, had no little
effect. The friendly Onondaga carried his point; and the Iroquois, having
failed to surprise their enemies as they had hoped, now saw an opportunity
to delude them by a truce. They sent back Tonty with a belt of peace; he
held it aloft in sight of the Illinois; chiefs and old warriors ran to
stop the fight; the yells and the firing ceased, and Tonty, like one waked
from a hideous nightmare, dizzy, almost fainting with loss of blood,
staggered across the intervening prairie to rejoin his friends. He was met
by the two friars, Ribourde and Membré, who, in their secluded hut a
league from the village, had but lately heard of what was passing, and who
now, with benedictions and thanksgiving, ran to embrace him as a man
escaped from the jaws of death.
The Illinois now withdrew, re-embarking in their canoes, and crossing
again to their lodges; but scarcely had they reached them, when their
enemies appeared at the edge of the forest on the opposite bank. Many
found means to cross, and, under the pretext of seeking for provisions,
began to hover in bands about the skirts of the town, constantly
increasing in numbers. Had the Illinois dared to remain, a massacre would
doubtless have ensued; but they knew their foe too well, set fire to their
lodges, embarked in haste, and paddled down the stream to rejoin their
women and children at the sanctuary among the morasses. The whole body of
the Iroquois now crossed the river, took possession of the abandoned town,
building for themselves a rude redoubt, or fort, of the trunks of trees
and of the posts and poles, forming the framework of the lodges which
escaped the fire. Here they ensconced themselves, and finished the work of
havoc at their leisure.
Tonty and his companions still occupied their hut; but the Iroquois,
becoming suspicious of them, forced them to remove to the fort, crowded as
it was with the savage crew. On the second day, there was an alarm. The
Illinois appeared in numbers on the low hills, half a mile behind the
town; and the Iroquois, who had felt their courage, and who had been told
by Tonty that they were twice as numerous as themselves, showed symptoms
of no little uneasiness. They proposed that he should act as mediator, to
which he gladly assented, and crossed the meadow towards the Illinois,
accompanied by Membré, and by an Iroquois who was sent as a hostage. The
Illinois hailed the overtures with delight, gave the ambassadors some
refreshment, which they sorely needed, and sent back with them a young man
of their nation as a hostage on their part. This indiscreet youth nearly
proved the ruin of the negotiation; for he was no sooner among the
Iroquois than he showed such an eagerness to close the treaty, made such
promises, professed such gratitude, and betrayed so rashly the numerical
weakness of the Illinois, that he revived all the insolence of the
invaders. They turned furiously upon Tonty and charged him with having
robbed them of the glory and the spoils of victory. "Where are all your
Illinois warriors, and where are the sixty Frenchmen that you said were
among them?" It needed all Tonty's tact and coolness to extricate himself
from this new danger.
The treaty was at length concluded; but scarcely was it made, when the
Iroquois prepared to break it, and set about constructing canoes of elm-
bark in which to attack the Illinois women and children in their island
sanctuary. Tonty warned his allies that the pretended peace was but a
snare for their destruction. The Iroquois, on their part, grew hourly more
jealous of him, and would certainly have killed him, had it not been their
policy to keep the peace with Frontenac and the French.
Several days after, they summoned him and Membré to a council. Six packs
of beaver skin were brought in, and the savage orator presented them to
Tonty in turn, explaining their meaning as he did so. The first two were
to declare that the children of Count Frontenac, that is, the Illinois,
should not be eaten; the next was a plaster to heal Tonty's wound; the
next was oil wherewith to anoint him and Membré, that they might not be
fatigued in travelling; the next proclaimed that the sun was bright; and
the sixth and last required them to decamp and go home. [Footnote: An
Indian speech, it will be remembered, is without validity, if not
confirmed by presents, each of which has its special interpretation. The
meaning of the fifth pack of beaver, informing Tonty that the sun was
bright,--"que le soleil étoit beau," that is, that the weather was
favorable for travelling,--is curiously misconceived by the editor of the
_Dernières Découvertes_, who improves upon his original by substituting
the words "par le cinquième paquet _ils nous exhortoient à adorer le
Soleil_."] Tonty thanked them for their gifts, but demanded when they
themselves meant to go and leave the Illinois in peace. At this the
conclave grew angry, and, despite their late pledge, some of them said
that before they went, they would eat Illinois flesh. Tonty instantly
kicked away the packs of beaver skin, the Indian symbol of the scornful
rejection of a proposal; telling them that since they meant to eat the
Governor's children, he would have none of their presents. The chiefs, in
a rage, rose and drove him from the lodge. The French withdrew to their
hut, where they stood all night on the watch, expecting an attack, and
resolved to sell their lives dearly. At daybreak, the chiefs ordered them
to begone.
Tonty, with an admirable fidelity and courage, had done all in the power
of man to protect the allies of Canada against their ferocious assailants;
and he thought it unwise to persist farther in a course which could lead
to no good, and which would probably end in the destruction of the whole
party. He embarked in a leaky canoe with Membré, Ribourde, Boisrondet, and
the remaining two men, and began to ascend the river. After paddling about
five leagues, they landed to dry their baggage and repair their crazy
vessel, when Father Ribourde, breviary in hand, strolled across the sunny
meadows for an hour of meditation among the neighboring groves. Evening
approached, and he did not return. Tonty with one of the men went to look
for him, and, following his tracks, presently discovered those of a band
of Indians, who had apparently seized or murdered him. Still, they did not
despair. They fired their guns to guide him, should he still be alive;
built a huge fire by the bank, and, then crossing the river, lay watching
it from the other side. At midnight, they saw the figure of a man hovering
around the blaze; then many more appeared, but Ribourde was not among
them. In truth, a band of Kickapoos, enemies of the Iroquois, about whose
camp they had been prowling in quest of scalps, had met and wantonly
murdered the inoffensive old man. They carried his scalp to their village,
and danced around it in triumph, pretending to have taken it from an
enemy. Thus, in his sixty-fifth year, the only heir of a wealthy
Burgundian house perished under the war-clubs of the savages, for whose
salvation he had renounced station, ease, and affluence. [Footnote: Tonty,
_Mémoire_, MS. Membré in Le Clercq, ii. 191. Hennepin, who hated Tonty,
unjustly charges him with having abandoned the search too soon, admitting,
however, that it would have been useless to continue it. This part of his
narrative is a perversion of Membré's account.]
Meanwhile, a hideous scene was enacted at the ruined village of the
Illinois. Their savage foes, balked of a living prey, wreaked their fury
on the dead. They dug up the graves; they threw down the scaffolds. Some
of the bodies they burned; some they threw to the dogs; some, it is
affirmed, they ate. [Footnote: "Cependant les Iroquois, aussitôt après le
départ du Sr. de Tonty, exercèrent leur rage sur les corps morts des
Ilinois, qu'ils déterrèrent ou abbattèrent de dessus les échafauds où les
Ilinois les laissent longtemps exposés avant que de les mettre en terre.
Ils en brûlèrent la plus grande partie, ils en mangèrent même quelques
uns, et jettèrent le reste aux chiens. Ils plantérent les têtes de ces
cadavres à demi décharnés sur des pieux," etc.--_Relation des
Découvertes_, MS.] Placing the skulls on stakes as trophies, they turned
to pursue the Illinois, who, when the French withdrew, had abandoned their
asylum and retreated down the river. The Iroquois, still, it seems, in awe
of them, followed them along the opposite bank, each night encamping face
to face with them; and thus the adverse bands moved slowly southward, till
they were near the mouth of the river. Hitherto, the compact array of the
Illinois had held their enemies in check; but now, suffering from hunger,
and lulled into security by the assurances of the Iroquois that their
object was not to destroy them, but only to drive them from the country,
they rashly separated into their several tribes. Some descended the
Mississippi; some, more prudent, crossed to the western side. One of their
principal tribes, the Tamaroas, more credulous than the rest, had the
fatuity to remain near the mouth of the Illinois, where they were speedily
assailed by all the force of the Iroquois. The men fled, and very few of
them were killed; but the women and children were captured to the number,
it is said, of seven hundred. [Footnote: _Relation des Découvertes_, MS.
Frontenac to the King, N.Y. _Col. Docs_., ix. 147. A memoir of Duchesneau
makes the number twelve hundred.] Then followed that scene of torture, of
which, some two weeks later, La Salle saw the revolting traces. [Footnote:
"Ils [les Illinois] trouvèrent dans leur campement des carcasses de leurs
enfans que ces anthropophages avoient mangez, ne voulant même d'autre
nourriture que la chair de ces infortunez."--La Potherie, ii. 145, 146.
Compare _note_, _ante_, p. 196.] Sated, at length, with horrors, the
conquerors withdrew, leading with them a host of captives, and exulting in
their triumphs over women, children, and the dead.
After the death of Father Ribourde, Tonty and his companions remained
searching for him till noon of the next day, and then, in despair of again
seeing him, resumed their journey. They ascended the river, leaving no
token of their passage at the junction of its northern and southern
branches. For food, they gathered acorns and dug roots in the meadows.
Their canoe proved utterly worthless; and, feeble as they were, they set
out on foot for Lake Michigan. Boisrondet wandered off, and was lost. He
had dropped the flint of his gun, and he had no bullets; but he cut a
pewter porringer into slugs with which he shot wild turkeys, by
discharging his piece with a firebrand; and after several days he had the
good fortune to rejoin the party. Their object was to reach the
Pottawattamies of Green Bay. Had they aimed at Michillimackinac, they
would have found an asylum with La Forest at the fort on the St. Joseph;
but unhappily they passed westward of that post, and, by way of Chicago,
followed the borders of Lake Michigan northward. The cold was intense, and
they had much ado to grub up wild onions from the frozen ground to save
themselves from starving. Tonty fell ill of a fever and a swelling of the
limbs, which disabled him from travelling, and hence ensued a long delay.
At length they neared Green Bay, where they would have starved had they
not gleaned a few ears of corn and frozen squashes in the fields of an
empty Indian town. It was the end of November before they found the
Pottawattamies, and were warmly greeted by their chief, who had befriended
La Salle the year before, and who, in his enthusiasm for the French, was
wont to say that he knew but three great captains in the world, Frontenac,
La Salle, and himself. [Footnote: Membré, in Le Clercq, ii. 199. Of the
three, or rather four narratives, on which this chapter mainly rests, the
best is that contained in the manuscript of 1681, entitled the _Relation
des Découvertes_. This portion of it, which bears every evidence of
accuracy, was certainly supplied by Tonty himself or one of his
companions. The _Mémoire_ of Tonty is wholly distinct. It is a modest and
simple statement, of which the chief fault is its brevity. He undoubtedly
wrote another and more detailed narrative, which has been used by the
editor of the _Dernières Découvertes_, printed with Tonty's name. The
editor seems to have taken less liberties with his original in this part
of the book than in many others. The narrative of Membré sustains that of
Tonty, except in one or two unimportant points, where the writer's vanity
seems to have gained the better of his veracity.]
While Tonty rests at Green Bay, and La Salle at the fort on the St.
Joseph, we will leave them for a time to trace the strange adventures of
the errant friar, Father Louis Hennepin.
THE ILLINOIS TOWN.
The site of the great Illinois town.--This has not till now been
determined, though there have been various conjectures concerning it. From
a study of the contemporary documents and maps, I became satisfied, first,
that the branch of the River Illinois, called the "Big Vermilion," was the
_Aramoni_ of the French explorers; and, secondly, that the cliff called
"Starved Rock" was that known to the French as _Le Rocher_, or the Rock of
St. Louis. If I was right in this conclusion, then the position of the
Great Village was established; for there is abundant proof that it was on
the north side of the river, above the Aramoni, and below Le Rocher. I
accordingly went to the village of Utica, which, as I judged by the map,
was very near the point in question, and mounted to the top of one of the
hills immediately behind it, whence I could see the valley of the Illinois
for miles, bounded on the farther side by a range of hills, in some parts
rocky and precipitous, and in others covered with forests. Far on the
right, was a gap in these hills, through which the Big Vermilion flowed to
join the Illinois; and somewhat towards the left, at the distance of a
mile and a half, was a huge cliff, rising perpendicularly from the
opposite margin of the river. This I assumed to be _Le Rocher_ of the
French, though from where I stood I was unable to discern the distinctive
features which I was prepared to find in it. In every other respect, the
scene before me was precisely what I had expected to see. There was a
meadow on the hither side of the river, on which stood a farm-house; and
this, as it seemed to me, by its relations with surrounding objects, might
be supposed to stand in the midst of the space once occupied by the
Illinois town.
On the way down from the hill, I met Mr. James Clark, the principal
inhabitant of Utica, and one of the earliest settlers of this region. I
accosted him, told him my objects, and requested a half hour's
conversation with him, at his leisure. He seemed interested in the
inquiry, and said he would visit me early in the evening at the inn,
where, accordingly, he soon appeared. The conversation took place in the
porch, where a number of farmers and others were gathered. I asked Mr.
Clark if any Indian remains were found in the neighborhood. "Yes," he
replied, "plenty of them." I then inquired if there was any one spot where
they were more numerous than elsewhere. "Yes," he answered again, pointing
towards the farm-house on the meadow: "on my farm down yonder by the
river, my tenant ploughs up teeth and bones by the peck every spring,
besides arrow-heads, beads, stone hatchets, and other things of that
sort." I replied that this was precisely what I had expected, as I had
been led to believe that the principal town of the Illinois Indians once
covered that very spot. "If," I added, "I am right in this belief, the
great rock beyond the river is the one which the first explorers occupied
as a fort, and I can describe it to you from their accounts of it, though
I have never seen it except from the top of the hill where the trees on
and around it prevented me from seeing any part but the front." The men
present now gathered around to listen. "The rock," I continued, "is nearly
a hundred and fifty feet high, and rises directly from the water. The
front and two sides are perpendicular and inaccessible, but there is one
place where it is possible for a man to climb up; though with difficulty.
The top is large enough and level enough for houses and fortifications."
Here several of the men exclaimed, "That's just it." "You've hit it
exactly." I then asked if there was any other rock on that side of the
river which could answer to the description. They all agreed that there
was no such rock on either side, along the whole length of the river. I
then said, "If the Indian town was in the place where I suppose it to have
been, I can tell you the nature of the country which lies behind the hills
on the farther side of the river, though I know nothing about it except
what I have learned from writings nearly two centuries old. From the top
of the hills you look out upon a great prairie reaching as far as you can
see, except that it is crossed by a belt of woods following the course of
a stream which enters the main river a few miles below." (See _ante_, p.
205, _note_.) "You are exactly right again," replied Mr. Clark, "we call
that belt of timber the 'Vermilion Woods,' and the stream is the Big
Vermilion." "Then," I said, "the Big Vermilion is the river which the
French called the Aramoni: 'Starved Rock' is the same on which they built
a fort called St. Louis, in the year 1682; and your farm is on the site of
the great town of the Illinois."
I spent the next day in examining these localities, and was fully
confirmed in my conclusions. Mr. Clark's tenant showed me the spot where
the human bones were ploughed up. It was no doubt the graveyard violated
by the Iroquois. The Illinois returned to the village after their defeat,
and long continued to occupy it. The scattered bones were probably
collected and restored to their place of burial.