STRANGE STORIES OF THE
OF THE GREAT RIVER
HE HAD THE UNCANNY FEELING OF BEING WATCHED
STRANGE STORIES
OF THE
GREAT RIVER
THE ADVENTURES OF A BOY EXPLORER
BY
JOHNSTON GROSVENOR
ILLUSTRATED
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
Strange Stories of the Great River
Copyright, 1918, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
Published May, 1918
CONTENTS
ILLUSTRATIONS
FOREWORD
THERE is a river so long and wide that it is the pride of our continent; a very Father of Waters.
It draws many other streams into its basin and forms the largest drainage system in the world.
In early days this Great River was almost unknown. A few savages had paddled their skiffs upon it. Curious tales were told about it. Monsters guarded it. Sorcerers lived in its caverns. Mystic creatures both good and bad swam through its rapids.
After the New World was discovered some daring French explorers longing for adventure traveled into those wilds to see if they could find the hidden waterway of Indian romance.
One of them, a bold trader of Canada, in his scarlet coat and three-cornered hat, ventured into the farthest-away channels. Only one of his companions, a boy, came back with him to present the map he drew of the southern reaches of the mighty stream.
Next, a gray-frocked Belgian friar, sandaled and shaven of crown, set down on parchment the northern trend of the same river. His goose quill wrote the name of his young oarsman who sang to appease their Indian captors as white men and red rode the waves together.
A nobleman of France in doublet and hose journeyed farther than all others into the wilderness of bayous and tributaries and wrote his tragic history in the foundations of the fortresses which he built and in the heart of a stripling who served him.
Wearing the armor of a knight and commanding a fleet of brigantines, another Canadian adventurer, half gentleman and half buccaneer, with a motley Old World crew—one of them a whistler—made a gallant defense of the river's mouth against the pirates of the Spanish Main.
And a wise young governor in robes and wig of state, whose favorite companion was a fiddler of famous name and title—so says a quaint old letter or two—began the battles which determined the reign of law and order upon the Mississippi.
All of these soldiers of fortune and their scribes, Joliet and Marquette, Accau and Hennepin, La Salle and Tonty, Iberville and Bienville, made notes of their voyages to please the king who sent them out.
From their records written in French long ago and almost forgotten are taken these stories of the boy who shared in so many of their dangers and successes.
The French discovered most of the Mississippi. They were not the very first to see it, but they explored it, colonized it, and began its prosperity.
The United States has inherited the work of their genius.
Just as a nation lives at its noblest when it has the friendship and help of other countries, so a boy can better tell what to do with his own life when he hears the things that other lads have done. He will understand the present time after he has read the history of the past.
So with his plumed cap and his sword, with his whistle, his song and his fiddle, the French boy, Anthony Auguelle, the Picard du Gay, opens the brass lock of an ancient wooden-backed book, where he has been hidden, and walks out gaily to tell to-day's folks of the strange part he took in deciding the fate of the Great River and in the making of America.
J. G.
Indiana, 1918.
STRANGE STORIES
OF THE GREAT RIVER
I
A PAPER FLEET
Searching for the Father of Waters with the Indians' Friend, Jacques Marquette—A Voyage into the Unknown
A BOY was trying to learn a tune. He had an upper row of white, even teeth which showed attractively when he sang, so that he appeared quite like a cherub. But his two front lower teeth were crooked, overlapping each other irregularly, and leaving spaces through which he could whistle with many variations.
When he smiled these teeth gave him an impish expression. If he followed the smile with laughter, the dimples in his chin so emphasized the naughty look, that he seemed capable of any kind of mischief.
The quaint rhythm of the barbaric chant was hard to follow. He had to bob his curly head, shuffle his feet, and beat out the time with his hands to separate this new air from the medley of sounds about him.
"Flip, flop," went the white wings of gulls in the blue Canadian sky.
"Caw, caw," scolded numerous crows in the green tops of pines.
"Quack, quack," cried the ducks feeding among the sedges on the shore.
Waters, spreading to the horizon on three sides of the peninsula where he stood, were as blue as the sky. Their waves, hurrying before a warm wind, came leaping on the golden sands with a "Siss, siss, s-w-i-s-h" of silver froth.
Gray sand-plovers ran back and forth over the beaches, "Pipe, pipe, piping," continually. In the newly made brown garden plots, a flock of blackbirds, "Chat, chat, chattered." Speckled meadow-larks rose from among the dandelions of the sparse grass with full-throated trills.
As a chorus background for these singers, and not in the least interfering with them, were three hundred Indians chanting with all their lung power.
The boy stood in a gateway of the log stockade which inclosed the grounds of the bark-shingled mission-house of Saint Ignatius. On the shore was a hamlet of French traders buzzing like a hive of bees. Near it a huddle of wigwams set up by some visiting Ottawa savages was as full of clamor as a magpie family. Biggest and loudest of all boomed a Huron Indian village within its bark cabins behind its fortifications of picket fence.
On this commotion, which was characteristic of almost every French settlement in the New World at that time, shone the early morning sun of a bright spring day—an eventful and important day.
Traders and trappers and hunters were stopping here. Some were on their voyage up the big waterways to Lake Superior, others on the trip down toward Lake Erie, Niagara, and the settlements on the Saint Lawrence. For this mission on the peninsula of Mackinaw stood where three of the Great Lakes came together and attracted travelers, because it was such a central and good bartering point.
The half-civilized, half-Christianized Hurons, who loved trade, had taken this peninsula, put a stockade round their village, and, like good citizens, came regularly to mass at the mission each morning, before commencing their daily business of piling up wealth in the white man's fashion.
"The Indians are colored like a rainbow," the boy noticed. "Imagine a rainbow singing!" Through his pursed lips he was still struggling with that rainbow's tune.
Since this was to be a very special festal day, the Indians wished to do honor to it. "Behold us garbed in every one of the seven colors oft repeated!" their beads and feathers, paints and blankets of the gayest seemed to shriek.
After the long, dark, cold winter, the sunshine and the breeze stirred them pleasantly. The new season warmed the yeast of action in their veins. They felt the ancient instincts of their race stirring in response to the call of the rising year. This jolly old world is full of games and feasts. All rough and primitive sports have had their beginnings in just such days as this sparkling morning at Mackinaw.
Before the old chief of the tribe could preen himself to start the "O-o-o-oh, e-e-e-eh, ou-ou-ou-ouh" of the sunrise hymn which the priest of the mission had taught him to lead his braves in singing, an exuberant young Ottawa buck had followed his own wayward impulse and had burst into the wildest and most vigorous verse he knew.
Sacrilege! That verse was neither hymn nor anthem. It was a favorite scalp-song of his more savage cousins, the Chippewas.
In a moment other youths were humming it. They answered to its suggestion as the pines answered to the wind. New voices joined in at every repetition of its cadence. Its strains went to their heads and feet like fire-water. One by one, as they took up the song, they felt its movement and they began to swing into the measures of a dance. They stepped out its time with their toes turned in.
The boy tried again to sing it. Then he managed to whistle it.
"It is an odd sort of music, but I love it. This concert suits the weather better than one of our doleful, slow, wet-blanket hymns," he thought, as he, too, began to sway back and forth. "I can't understand the words. But by the way that buck clutches at his cherished top-knot to emphasize the ditty, it must be some sort of a scalp-song he is singing."
Distant Hurons heard the first notes, saw the movements of the dancers, and came loping up, ready to fall into the vortex of play.
"Never, never, did I hear anything of the kind before," the boy breathed hurriedly, enchanted by the novelty of the hour. "Prick up, my ears, prick up!" He still found the tune difficult.
Indian musical intervals are a little different from the intervals in the white man's conventional scale. It takes a quick ear to catch them. A white man needs to be young and adroit if he hopes to imitate a savage in a native dancing song.
A new note was added to the uproar as a gentle voice said, "Anthony," and an appealing hand was laid on the boy's sleeve. A black-gowned priest had stepped to his side. "Oh, Anthony, help me! My poor children do not know how they profane the church with that murderous song at its very door." The priest could understand the words of the scalp-song and he was filled with anxiety. "Quick! Think! What hymn can we adapt to that tune—that heathen tune? I cannot follow it as you are doing. What hymn can you sing to those measures? What hymn whose words they know? They must be diverted from scalping thoughts. Help me!" and the face of the priest, a Jesuit, young, handsome, pale with zeal, was bent upon his cavorting Indians in deep concern.
The lad, Anthony, called thus to his duty as choir-boy, answered almost at once: "Yes, Père Marquette, I will. Perhaps—perhaps—the Jubilate might do."
"Try it," begged the priest.
"Begin now," insisted a man who was the Jesuit's companion. He also was young, not more than thirty, and plainly a gentleman. He had the air of a soldier. That he was in full sympathy with the priest could be seen in the protecting stand he took beside the Père Marquette as though to make his vigorous body a shield for his slighter friend in case of trouble with the excited savages.
"Begin, Tony," he repeated, sharply. "Scalpsongs started in play may end in deadly earnest. A brutal dance can lead them back to ferocious rites and tangle us all in a massacre."
"Yes, Sieur Joliet," and Anthony, hastily gathering up the skirts of his service gown, ran forward, jumped to the nearest stump-top, and threw out his arms in the form of the cross. The roots of his curls stirred oddly. He fancied he could feel them standing up. Yet he faced the mob with keen delight. He wanted to be in the thick of things.
With what beating hearts under their calm appearance at the post of duty the priest and the soldier of fortune watched the boy it would be hard to tell. Each was thinking: "To-day we begin the big work of our lives. Is our fortune to be lost for a song?"
Then a long melodious note, keyed high and sharp, struck like a sword across the confusion of noise and motion and color. Its very fineness cut its way. One exquisite boyish soprano rose above dozens of rough barytones and coarse basses.
The Indians threw up their heads at that clarion call.
For many weeks, under the good priest's guidance, the boy had tutored them in Church music. They had learned to listen for his keynote and to follow his instructions. His yellow pate, his wide gray eyes, his young grace and confidence, his white angelic gown, all so different from their own swarthy gorgeousness, arrested their attention as nothing else could do. For a surprised and shuffling moment their custom of harkening to him struggled with their instinct for a spring orgy.
Sweet and clear—as compelling as a bugle summons—that long note came again.
They hesitated in the song. They stumbled in the dance. Confusion threw them out of tune and out of time. Then in the same key his voice took up the scalp-song. In an obbligato of purest quality he intoned each note. Their faltering and irresolution had broken their chorus. Their music dwindled away. He was left singing almost alone.
By surprising them he had overborne them.
He repeated the strain. Artfully he retarded it. He shaped his syllables into words. On their bewildered ears fell the prehistoric strains absolutely true and charming. But in perfect measures, familiar and desirable, came the Huron phrases which he sang each morning with them. He was fitting the music of the scalp-song to a Huron translation of a Catholic hymn. It was the Jubilate, "Oh, be joyful in the Lord, all ye lands!"
Their dancing feet, all ready for any motion, gradually fell into the time which his nodding head and his ringing tones marked for them— the slower measures of the Church. And behold, they were walking, not dancing. The words of every day came back readily to their lips as he pronounced them distinctly and with reverence, "Serve the Lord with gladness!"
Paganism dropped into their souls and hid away. The wild children of the waters and of the forests began to move sedately toward the mission, singing to native music the canticle they should rightly be using at that hour, "And come before His Presence with a song!"
All Indians love noise. They have a childish joy in racket. Music good or bad catches their fancy. A rollicking tune sometimes controls them when prayers fall useless. Any sort of a singer finds favor with a missionary. The careless mocking-bird in Anthony's throat was the Père Marquette's chief aid, as he struggled out of one danger into another in going from fort to fort.
Anthony Auguelle was a waif out of France, gay and sunny as his own province of Picardy, a runaway, a stowaway, an emigrant; one small item in the unlisted riffraff tumbling over the side of some square-rigged hulk onto the shores of the New World. He had been in turn the companion of pirates and priests, of scullions and captains.
When his fighting spirit and his doubled fists could not make him a place, his voice could win him bread. "Sing for your supper, Tony," was the command which any roustabout of a port might give him. Because of the joyousness of his chantey in response, he had cuddled warm in the shipping many a night between Havre and Quebec, and in the canoes between Quebec and Mackinaw, when others shivered neglected. The Picard du Gay they called him.
"To save his soul I will befriend the boy," was the priest's motive in attaching him to this expedition where there was much danger from savages. "To interest the Indians he ought to go with us," was the trader's idea.
The Tionnontateronnous Indians, whose name even the patient and ceremonious Jesuits felt obliged to shorten to Huron Indians for daily use, lived at Michilimakinac—dubbed Mackinaw—near the lake which was finally called Michigan instead of by its right name of Michihiganing. The Outaouasinagaux when hurried became Ottawas.
The Hurons were clever and had made friends with the French from the time of the founding of Quebec, foreseeing that peace, prosperity, and a helpful religion would come to them through the ministry of the Society of Jesus and the knowledge of the coureurs de bois, those French fur hunters and traders of the forests, who befriended the society's missionaries.
"We must have patience with untutored minds," the priest had said in days past, when, through all the changes made by Indian wars and the shifting of fishing-places and hunting-grounds, he had followed these Indians. "You traders in my wake must treat the natives justly."
So when, at the feast of the Virgin in the previous autumn, there had come to this settlement that soldier and explorer, that prince of traders, the Sieur Joliet, with papers from Frontenac, the governor of Canada, which commissioned him to take their priest, the Père Marquette, and to go upon a voyage in search of a Great River—that water Messipi—of which some Indians had heard, but which no white man had yet seen, the Père Marquette's grateful Hurons were all alert to help the adventurous plan.
"What is good for priests and traders is good for us; it gets us beads and iron knives."
To Mackinaw, then, during the winter, was brought every fact and fancy the savages could find out about the Great Water.
To these bartering Indians new waterways discovered meant new fur lands opened. New lands opened meant more traders coming. More traders coming meant more wealth for the Hurons, just as it did for their ruler, His Majesty the King, Louis XIV of France.
"In the matter of greed," thought the naughty Anthony, "the frowsy savage in his blanket and the splendid king upon his throne are twins at heart." But in his secret mind he told himself: "When that brave gentleman, the Sieur Joliet, desires to go exploring for the glory of achievement, and when that pious aristocrat, the Père Marquette, accompanies him for the sake of the Church—ah, that is quite another matter. I make my bow to them."
Said Louis Joliet to Jacques Marquette: "Our Canadian governor has learned the importance of finding and taking possession of that mighty river which the western natives say runs from the northern lakes to the southern seas. Because I am Canadian born and educated and know many Indian languages and customs and the demands of various climates, I am chosen for the venture. I am glad that my orders are for you to make the voyage with me. There are gold-mines, jewels, and riches untold upon that river Messipi."
Said Jacques Marquette to Louis Joliet: "There are people upon that Great Water who have never heard of our religion. I am enraptured at the good news of my selection for the voyage. It gives me happiness to expose my life for the salvation of all these nations."
"If we find the river which will give this land a water path to the open seas and a way to the ports of the earth, we will hold the destinies of empires in our hands. What is danger but the zest to make such ventures the greatest delight? We will add to the sum of human happiness and to the wealth of mankind," said the Sieur Joliet. And his friend replied, "I will count the whole world well lost if I save some heathen souls."
The time had come for setting out.
The enterprise was hazardous, but all care had been used in getting ready. And now, on the 17th of May, 1673, the whole concourse of Hurons, Ottawas, traders, and trappers trailed to the beach to see the start.
There stood the Indian canoes of the kind that made possible the early exploration of the New World. The savages, commanded by Sieur Joliet, blessed by Père Marquette, cajoled by Anthony, had made all new ones of birch bark—that Birch papyracea, paper birch—which is so easy to build, so fast to paddle, so light to carry.
In them this voyage was to be made.
Anthony was packing the stores. "Here is maize in plenty; there is jerked venison."
Two articles! Indian corn and dried meat! This was the whole stock of food for men who were to go on a precarious journey of unknown length. There were some treasures of beads and trinkets and gay cloth; much ammunition for the guns was in the load.
Besides these articles each canoe was built to carry three full-grown men. There were two canoes.
Into the first one stepped the Sieur Joliet and a couple of coureurs de bois. The second canoe received one coureur de bois, one undersized half-breed interpreter, the slender Père Marquette and his choir boy, Anthony. Seven men in all.
Seven men in all! For one of the biggest ventures of any age!
Seven men in all! For one of the greatest achievements in the world!
Strange that they should try it! Stranger still if they should win!
Each man had a gun and a paddle and the clothes upon his back. His main equipment was his strength of purpose, his faith in himself. The commander of the expedition carried a sword. The priest bore a tiny traveling-altar.
They took up their paddles and set their prows toward the lake.
The lively bucks on shore again began the old, old chant. They used the words of the Jubilate. That meant they were promising to be good children. The Hurons could be trusted to keep the fort in peace.
Oh, tiny fleet of birch bark! Oh, little band of explorers in paper craft! As they disappeared over the horizon in a nimbus of gold, how could the loyal band of natives who watched the departure understand the high hopes of those brave French hearts? Or dream that the voyagers were trying to find the longest river system in the world? Or that out of their adventures should grow such interest and investigation and settlement as to make the valley of the Great River the happy home to-day of fifty million Americans?
They went through the Mackinaw Straits, across Lake Michigan, into Green Bay, and up the Fox River to its source; then by portage into the headwaters of a river which they spelled Mescousing but which they pronounced much like Wisconsin. They visited the wild-rice people—Oumalouminik, and the fire-folk—Aweatsewaenrrhonous, and gained more news of the West.
Many a school-boy of to-day, who has made himself a canoe in his manual-training class, knows that he can set it afloat in these same rivers and in a wet season follow Anthony's route along a water path as old as the first Indian—perhaps older.
As they drove along there was constant danger from the wilds. There was heavy toil at the paddles. But there was also the daily excitement of a chase for game and the ever fresh pleasure of country luxuriant and sunny unfolding before them.
They went far past all regions which the savages had described.
In fine June weather they came to the mouth of the Wisconsin. There they saw what northern white men had never seen before—the grand old Father of Waters rolling past!
They took a stand upon the shore at 42° 30´. The leather-clad coureurs de bois, happy and careless and hairy, their locks hanging down their backs, their beards covering their chests, their forearms and knees all overgrown like forest fauns, helped the black-gowned priest to make a huge rustic cross. The clouted half-breed dug a hole to plant it in.
Anthony, in buff jerkin, buckled shoes, and long hose, grew serious as he held the instruments of observation while the Sieur Joliet made the official notes and arranged upon the cross the lilies of France, the emblem of the Bourbons.
Then the Sieur Joliet removed his cocked hat. With the breeze stirring his handsome locks and his jaunty mustache, the sun glinting through the gold and silver embroideries of his skirted coat and on the soft polished leather of his cavalier boots, he drew his sword.
In the name of the king this picturesque group took possession of the Great River. This was the real beginning of progressive history of the famous stream so full of stories. It was a princely gift to France—a priceless boon to the world.
II
WHITE CALUMET
Carrying a Peace Pipe among Savages for the Commandant, Louis Joliet—Lost in the Rapids
THE rushes at the shore-line were broken and bent. Anthony, on watch, glanced across the prow of his canoe and saw on the low ground the prints of human feet! Marks of bare toes in the mud!
No need to signal, "Look out!" His electrical pause had run like wireless through both canoes. All fingers pointed to the same spot.
"Men! Savage men!"
Now this thing happened many, many years before the days of Robinson Crusoe. That man Friday with the large historic feet was not yet born. This surprise was all the Frenchmen's own.
After coming for hundreds of miles in primeval loneliness and spending weeks without seeing a human face, these tracks filled the explorers with curiosity and with caution. They noted the traces with swift decision. All wanted to land and investigate.
"I must speak my message to every nation," said the priest, picking up his tiny altar.
"There is a path, well beaten, leading inland," the Sieur Joliet pointed out as he loaded himself with trinkets. "We two will go ahead and make friends. Stay offshore on guard, you others, until we send for you," and both leaders disappeared through the long grass of the rolling meadow.
After what seemed a wait of many hours, the impatient watchers saw upon the path the figure of an Indian youth running toward them. He stopped suddenly with hand outstretched when he neared the water's edge.
The interpreter gave him greeting in Algonquin, that common tongue of midwestern natives, "How welcome are the feet of the messenger who comes in friendship!"
The answer was in a boyish treble, a trifle breathless, in the language of the Illinois, a form of the Algonquin. The sentences were clear and so slowly spoken that in spite of their astonishment at the age of the runner they understood him. "How beautiful, O Frenchmen, is the sun when thou cometh to visit us! Our town awaits thee! Thou shalt enter our cabins in peace!" Having made the speech taught him, he held out a piece of white paper as a token of good faith.
So the explorers paddled in and gazed at the youth with interest. He was not as tall as Anthony, nor so heavy. He was straighter and more supple than any white boy could ever be. His head, tufted with a chieftain's scalp-lock, was set arrogantly on his slim round neck. No traveler, however observing, could have described his clothes. He hadn't any!
His hair and eyes were black; his teeth were very white by contrast; his features were straight and delicate.
On his left wrist, which he placed against his heart to conceal, with Indian instinct, even so natural a function as its rapid beating from his hurrying, he held an iridescent passenger-pigeon.
A piece of paper in an Indian country was a guarantee of a white man's summons. They followed it with confidence. Anthony began immediately, "My name's Tony. What is yours?"
The little Indian threw back his head in the haughtiest of gestures, "He who speaks is a slave. He is called the Wingèd One, a son of the greatest sachem of the Southwest tribes. By his captors—lean dogs of Illinois—he has been given to the Black-gowned One and to the white man with beads who is master of the Black-gown."
To Anthony's puzzled look the interpreter replied: "Some Indian tribes sell or give as presents the captives they take in conquest. They have traded him to Sieur Joliet for beads."
So swiftly had the Wingèd One come to them that they had gone some distance on the path before they began to meet the groups of savages who had plainly started from the village when he did and had been outdistanced. They were strung out all over the prairie according to the speed they had been able to make trying to keep up with the Wingèd One. They, too, were dressed in a costume of Mother Nature's designing, the close-fitting garment of their own skins.
"Don't be afraid," said the half-breed, "all they want is to look at us." And sure enough, the stragglers passed quietly, devouring with their eyes these so queer folks from the other side of the world.
Vivid with interest, Anthony laid a friendly hand on the Wingèd One and showed his delightfully crooked teeth in a grin of comradeship. The savage returned it with a cool stare, but the color spreading in a deep blush, wave upon wave, from brow to toes, under his bronze skin, showed that the compliment had gone home to his lonely little slave heart. His agitation made the pigeon flutter at his side.
At this response, Anthony threw back his head and laughed aloud. Indians have a sense of humor, but they do not yield to laughter as this French boy did. The merry sound drew the little slave to him and the two strays, one from Picardy, one from the desert, went together to join the trader and the priest.
Hundreds of Indians, inhabitants of three villages, had come to see the white men. They were gathered in the open space in front of the sachem's bark tent. An envoy made a speech of greeting:
"We thank thee for taking so much pains to come and visit us. Never has the earth seemed so lovely nor the sun so bright as to-day. Never has the Great River been so calm nor so free from rocks. Your magic canoes have removed all obstacles as they came. Never has our tobacco tasted so fine nor our corn looked so thriving. Come and dwell with us that we may know your Manitou!"
To honor the guests a busy preparation for a grand feast was going forward in the center of the town. There was to be smoking of the peace pipes. Most splendid of all, a dance of the calumet was soon to begin.
Warriors strutted in the front rows of the crowd. Squaws slipped to the back. Men and women singers gathered under a tree. Little red cubs of babies scuttled in and out. Dogs got under everybody's feet. The sun was going down and firelight and twilight mingled with the shadows.
On a mat of woven rushes lay the all-powerful calumet. It was a pipe with a red-stone bowl for tobacco and a long hollow stem of two feet or more. Feathers of the white eagle decorated it. Red feathers would have meant a calumet of war—and destruction to the guests!
This calumet was to be given as the greatest of all compliments to the bead-bringing visitors. It was a passport, a letter of credit, and a talisman to any group of strange Indians.
When the music for the dance began all the Indians sang the same air, but they sang in octaves. The soprano of the women and boys, the barytone of some men, the bass of others, produced a chorus full and rich. Drums, many high, a few low in tone, supplied the place of harmonized chords which Indian composers cannot manage. To this accompaniment, weird and incomplete, but agreeable to Anthony's ear, the dancers stepped in perfect time and graceful swaying as they kept to the long-drawn-out, bewildering, and sweetly monotonous round upon round.
As the shining copper-red bodies of the dancers gyrated, their shadows leaped and fell. When the firelight flickered, the eyes of the watching hundreds squatting in the background glowed green like fox-fire.
In the pauses of the music speeches were made and more presents given, first by the sachems and then by the Frenchmen.
The French had so strong a passion for courtesy as to carry their good manners even into the wigwams of savages. In return the natives were glad to honor such guests with barbaric splendor. Perhaps of all the strange things that have happened on the Great River none is stranger than the fact that white men of a later day should have forgotten the politeness with which the clever Illinois nations first received their race and should have rudely and greedily turned such powerful allies into revengeful foes.
As they went on down the river the priest handled the calumet gingerly and carried it in a prominent place. "Odd!" he said, "that a toy of feathers should be the god of peace and war! In a wilderness where brute force and cunning seem to hold sway that the power of an idea—a fanciful amulet—should be the arbiter of life and death! That scientific explorers should pin their hopes to an eagle's plume!"
As they went from one village to another some natives showed them hospitality, some indifference, some hatred, but all were obedient to the white calumet's demand for peace. "Men do not give to the crowns and scepters of kings the honor Indians pay to the calumet."
Very often at sunrise Anthony could prophesy to the little slave: "To-day we will come to a wattled hamlet. The Sieur Joliet will give knives and trinkets to the sachems. The Père Marquette will preach. Each Indian will touch my curls to feel if they are real and ask what kind of a stone I use to file my teeth nice and crooked so the songs will come through." At sunset he could add, "I told you so!"
But when on a quiet morning at 33° latitude the little slave foretold, "The Wingèd One to-day will meet many enemies," Anthony did not believe him, for none of the white men could see signs of Indians.
"In yonder elm a sentinel sits."
The explorers glanced sharply about; nothing showed among the leaves.
"Above the whitewood a smoke signal rises."
Only summer drifts of cloud met their gaze.
"Red men stalk the white."
It was unbelievable; the level shore spaces were empty.
"Ambushed!" cried the child. "Hold up the calumet!"
Wooden pirogues loaded with armed savages swung across the Mississippi in front of them. A startled backward turn showed them another barrage of the same sort cutting off retreat upriver. On both shores painted and feathered men sprang up by dozens to howl like fiends. They leaped into the water to catch the canoes. A kindly eddy swirled the birch barks out of reach. Whoops of rage burst from the warriors. A shower of arrows chased the explorers. Tomahawks whizzed close.
They ducked; ducked promptly.
Not so the little slave. He stood erect and let a tomahawk snip off half his cherished topknot without flinching.
An Indian child baiting warriors caught the attention of the old braves. They scanned him so closely that they saw the calumet at which he pointed. They hastened to throw down their bows and arrows in token of submission to the peace pipe. Magic calumet!
Anthony did not enjoy the visit which followed nor the meetings with other inhabitants of this group of villages. He had a constant desire to look behind him. There was often a queer weakness in his knees. He wanted to keep his curly scalp close to the white eagle feathers. The temper of these observers of the calumet's command was not all he wished it might be.
Yet when one of the Akamsea sachems stood up in formal pow-wow his words were fair. And he was agreeable to look upon. He was tall. He was straight. He shone like a copper candlestick. He had on his best clothes—that is, there was a blue quill in his nose and a red one over his left ear. For the rest he wore a blank expression and he carried his own white calumet.
He told them, "Only once has a white man seen our Great River," then added, with cold significance, "He lies buried here under the water."
He meant the Spaniard, Hernandez De Soto, who had come across the country from the southeast more than a century before, and who had died in 1541 on the banks of the Mississippi, which he was undoubtedly the first to find.
"A few days' paddling to the south will bring your canoes to the mouth of this Father of Waters; for it flows into the southern Gulf," the sachem said.
Where the Messipi went was one of the chief things the French wanted the Sieur Joliet to learn. This speech of the sachem was telling him exactly what he wished to know.
"Savage Indians, in league with white men who do not observe the calumet, infest the waters of the Gulf," was the sachem's next sinister hint.
If the Frenchmen and their maps fell into the hands of their rivals, Spain could claim and take immense territory just explored by the agents of France. How might seven men in birch bark hold out against the cutlasses and "six-pounders" of a galleon?
To keep what one has gained is better than to lose all in trying to win more. The Sieur Joliet gave one glance at the low-hanging pole-star, one word of command to his followers, and before his doubtful hosts could form a plan for or against him the explorers were paddling with all speed up the Mississippi beyond the chance of pursuit.
The Wingèd One fed his pigeon chinkapin, which he called chechinquamin, with royal unconcern, but Anthony did his work nervously. "I am always kind to our slave," he thought, as he watched the little Indian with pity, "but I cannot be sure how the Spaniards will treat me if they catch us."
Slavery in various forms has been part of the Great River's life. After the news of its discovery had spread and vessels from many lands dragged their anchors at its mouth, captives red, white, brown, yellow, and black were traded to anybody and everybody for kegs of rum, or hogsheads of molasses, or bundles of tobacco.
Among the pioneers who later came to settle the prairies and woodlands of its fertile shores were numerous bound children, indentured servants and redemptioners. Then ship-load upon ship-load of stolen African negroes were brought to the fields of the South when the invention of the cotton-gin made their labor profitable. For nearly two hundred years the river washed away the tears of hapless bondsmen.
To escape any native pursuers whom his enemies might send after him the Sieur Joliet led his men up the Illinois River to the Chakakou, which the glaciers had twisted to run into Lake Michigan, but which daring modern engineers have turned back again as it was in the very beginning, so that nowadays the system of the Great Lakes is partly drained into the Great River by the same Chicago, a geographical condition which was not true when Anthony helped to draw it on the maps.
Père Marquette went on to his Indians at Mackinaw. Sieur Joliet took Anthony and the little slave and one coureur de bois and kept on down toward Quebec to report. When at last they came near Montreal, full of the triumph of their great discovery, they had paddled, since the beginning of their venture, something like three thousand miles. It was two years since the leader had left this fort for the West.
It was an autumn morning. Brilliantly colored forests lined the shores, and between two big rocks, like a cathedral door, the rapids ahead sparkled in a vista of incomparable loveliness. Over them flights of migrating pigeons winged their way. The pet on the little slave's wrist cooed an instinctive answer to their call, rose in a flash of silver and soared into their midst.
With a cry of sorrow as though he were losing his dearest friend, the small chieftain sprang to his feet and threw up his hands as if to catch it as it flew. Too late to check this impetuous movement, the other three crouched low and swung their bodies in a frenzied attempt to preserve the balance of the canoe. Useless! It capsized on the instant.
THE MEN WENT HEADLONG INTO THE RAPIDS
The men went headlong into the rapids. The canoe smashed against a rock.
All the heavy goods dropped to the bottom of the channel. Lighter stuff floated on the current a moment and then sank. Priceless notes and maps and drawings burst their waterproof coverings on a sharp projection, were scattered on a hundred waves, soaked with spray, hurled away, and utterly destroyed.
Anthony plunged to the bottom. Treading water he tore off his jerkin and came to the surface. He caught at an exposed stone. It was rough enough for a fingerhold and he might have saved himself had he not seen, sweeping past him, his Indian brother, the Wingèd One. Crushed by some cruel rock, lifeless, beyond all human help, the stripling royal, a slave no longer, drifted out into the happy hunting-grounds of all his race.
Strong arms grasped Anthony—pulled him up to blessed air. He was kept afloat and dragged free of the rapids. With the Sieur Joliet's fingers in his hair to help, he began to swim again. They gained the bank and clambered to safety.
But the coureur de bois—that laughing, hairy faun—had perished with the Indian.
In bitterness and despair the boy fell upon the sod and abandoned himself to grief.
The Sieur Joliet stood white and cold, like a ghost from whom all hope has fled.
Oh, the cruelty of fate! To carry them harmless through half a hundred rapids, only to shipwreck them in sight of home!
A long, hard voyage had come to naught; the proof of his greatest discovery was lost.
"I have nothing left but my life," he groaned.
Bruised and battered, soaking wet and in rags, they trudged on through a forest path. Sometimes they sank in utter weariness; oftener they supported each other with renewed courage. And so at last the fort came in sight and opened its comforting home-like gates to them.
Here the sorrowful Anthony saw the explorer give his empty hands to the commandant. It seemed to the boy that all the glory of their expedition had gone out in tragedy like the poor little slave who was lost in the rapids.
Imagine his astonishment when he received the command, "Bring me, Tony, a pot of ink and some quills."
The obedient Anthony, standing as assistant, with his gray eyes growing wider and wider with admiration, saw the Sieur Joliet set the quills to parchment. Under his skilful fingers there grew a picture of the course of the Great River as he recollected it. He drew its twists and turns, its distances and latitudes, put down the location and the names of the villages where he had received the calumet.
It was a curious document of amazing accuracy. From it grew the further history of the Mississippi. Whenever an adventurer wanted to go a-wandering he studied this map. To Western explorers it became their book of A B C.
III
SIX SIOUX
Marching into Captivity under the War-bonnets, Who Caught Friar Hennepin—A Manitou Becomes a Miller
THE cold nose of a dog nuzzled into Anthony's ear. He woke with a jerk. Peeping from under the brush screen of his camp he saw a file of canoes drifting in the moonlight. He crouched low, pistol in hand, and waited. No wild animal of the wood could have held itself motionless any better than the boy did. His two companions were asleep, weapons ready at their sides. The little dog, trained in a hard school, stood like a pointer.
The canoes came on. Each silhouetted a dozen war-bonnets against the silver river; then it slowly vanished. One by one they went down-stream. Anthony sighed with relief. His path was up-stream. How much better to have the warriors pass in the night than to meet them on the river!
For northern Indians promptly murdered any white men whom they found after dark. It was an easy way to win the steel knives which they coveted more than any other one thing. Travelers hid themselves at sunset, avoided prowlers in the gloaming, and tried to visit natives by day in villages known to be peaceful. The arms carried by a small trading party were of little use against a band of warriors.
Anthony lay down to rest again. He praised and petted the dog, who was proud to stay on guard. But he could not go to sleep. There might be more Indians, painted for battle, coming after these.
He was not as eager as usual for the voyage forward. Yet the backward route was impossible. Behind him lay his base of supplies, Fort Crevecœur, that unhappy post whose very name meant heartbreak. Its safety depended somewhat on the results of this journey of his, and he could not see much luck ahead if the river was going to be peopled with fighting-men of savage tribes.
Anthony was not equipped for war; only for defense. Besides the pistol he had a sword. It had been given him by the Sieur Joliet.
For his successful explorations the French government had rewarded the Sieur Joliet with the island of Anticosti, where he had established a manor and given the boy a home. From there Anthony had brought the sword and the pistol and his ever-recurring wanderlust to an expedition which Robert Cavelier, called the Sieur La Salle, was fitting out to develop the Mississippi Basin.
Under a patent from the king several forts for trade and for defense had already been built. This one of Crevecœur was the Sieur La Salle's farthest outpost. It was the one French settlement to hold their claim in the Mississippi Valley.
They had built it without trouble from the gentle Illinois Indians, but the reckless adventurers who made up the troops which defended it became so unruly when they were shut up in the little stockade during the winter that a mutiny seemed always at hand.
No one knew when he laid his head on his pillow at night whether he would still be wearing it in the morning.
So far, the strong hand of the commander had kept the soldiers within bounds, but even he thought it wise to send out scouts as early as possible to the western waters who might bring back news of fresh discoveries, of more lands, perhaps gold-fields, to conquer. Then the troops would forget their quarrels and advance together under discipline in the hope of treasure trove.
A second group of traders promised to follow this first one to keep a line for traffic and messages open. Where Anthony went others could go. He was the scout.
A man named Accau was put in charge of ten thousand livres' worth of goods in beads and knives and trinkets, for trading with any Indians they might meet. A Franciscan friar, Louis Hennepin, was sent as a missionary to the natives.
"Anybody but us would be afraid to undertake such a journey," he had bragged, quite frankly.
"Perhaps you are, anyway," Accau had commented. "I am."
Anthony was glum and talked little. And the fourth member of this exploring party, a King Charles spaniel, Accau's pet, said nothing at all. A faithful sentinel he stood watch at night, fulfilled his round of duties, and found no fault with anything. King Charles was truly royal; it was a joy to belong to his court.
Their canoe had dropped down the Illinois and then turned north on the Great River.
They had fended off huge floating cakes of ice in the current; they had fought hungry bears on the bank; they had struggled with cold all the time and everywhere.
And now as he lay and watched with King Charles, on the lookout for more Indians on the river, Anthony had one of those blue moods which told him that he would probably have trouble with savages on top of his other woes. For they had passed the mouth of the Wisconsin and were in country new to them. Glimpses of red men came oftener and oftener.
They continually looked for overhanging trees on the shore-line, and when they heard or saw savages coming they hid under the branches until the strangers had gone again.
But now in mid-April—it was the year of 1680—they found themselves in such a narrow and crooked channel that Accau became alarmed. "Go ashore," he commanded Anthony. "Peep around each bend and signal us to follow with the canoe if the way is safe."
The friar picked up his beads for a fervent prayer to his patron, Saint Anthony of Padua.
Alas and alack! All their caution came too late.
Without a sound of blade in the water, without a tone of human voice, a dozen or so of birch-bark craft swept round the point and swooped down upon them!
There were three or four war-bonnets in each canoe. It was a pursuing party such as Anthony had dreaded.
At the sight of quarry the savages broke the silence. They split the air with war-whoops. They surrounded the explorers' canoe; grabbed it; hustled it ashore. Big game!
The Frenchmen were confused with the topsy-turvy handling, the flutter of feathers, and the deafening howls.
They tried to show a bold front. Père Louis said, "They cannot terrify me," and he coolly picked out the ugliest chief, a furrowed old sinner named Aquipaguetin, and presented the calumet. That worthy snatched it from the friar and left him at the mercy of the fierce young braves.
These youths were eager to destroy the Frenchmen. Dozens of stone knives and war-clubs were ready.
It was not mercy which stayed them. It was indecision.
How was any warrior to scalp such curious heads?
Above an odd white face unlike anything these savages had ever seen the Père Louis, neatly tonsured, had no hair in the place where hair ought to be. Accau sported a great beard. Whiskers were unknown among Indians.
King Charles, gazing from his hiding-place in his master's jerkin, showed a second hairy face. The savages were dazed at this double vision. They stared at Accau. They could not make up or down of him. Spring winds had burnt Anthony's blond skin to a fiery hue. His fair curls were tousled. Such a countenance in such a halo was too much for them. Light hair was something entirely new. Curls were ornaments undreamed of. Although he bore hair enough for a dozen scalps they had no method for collecting it.
As they hesitated, a younger and wiser chief, Narrhetoba, commanded the observance of the calumet. There was a flurry of objections, but they obeyed. The bloodthirsty eyes were turned from the baffling scalps to the presents which the explorers were trying to show.
Anthony addressed them in one Algonquin dialect after another. Accau tried them in Iroquois and Huron. The friar thundered at them in Latin, French, Portuguese, and Dutch. All words were alike to them.
A howl went up. "Mi-am-hi! Mi-am-hi! Mi-am-hi!"
Anthony picked up a stick. "I'll draw a map on the sand and show them that I saw those Indians pass in the night far below here; the whole tribe is now scudding westward over the prairies out of reach."
The map was drawn. Its meaning was plain; its news was unwelcome.
A clamor of rage followed. The old men wept aloud.
Aquipaguetin in particular lamented loudly.
The white men guessed that this chief had lost a son in battle with the Miamis and that he was leading the Sioux in hope of revenge. So disappointed was he at the turn of events that he shed grimy tears all over Père Louis' shaven crown.
"This old fellow carries his son's bones with him to keep his wrath in mind," the friar explained as well as he could above the hubbub. "If he can't get even with the Miamis he will take out his anger on the next people at hand—Frenchmen."
All the other chiefs began to wail.
"I think that we, too, are the same as dead," murmured Accau. "They mourn as they would over the slain," and his whiskers quivered with dread of torture and the stake. In hope of diverting the Indians he began to hand out presents to Anthony, who tossed them with much show to the friar, who in turn threw them among the chiefs, who groveled to them like Circe's swine. Half a dozen axes and twice that number of knives made a fine exhibit.
With the quick rolling eyes of men in deadly peril, the Frenchmen noticed that the Indians, in spite of gay paint and big feathers, were poorly set up. Their skin clothes were old, ragged, meager; their bodies more than half naked in the chill weather. Their jewelry was of shells, their embroideries of quills. Not one bit of iron showed, nor did they have beads.
How like glittering wealth the bright cutting edges of the traders' knives must look to them! By simple pantomime the friar told these savages that many more white men with much more steel were coming to give presents to those who were friendly and to kill those who were not. Then he bent his neck with humility, bared it, and offering Narrhetoba one of the sharp axes, cried, "Dare you to cut off a white man's head?"
At that a hush fell on the group. Across the spring sunshine falling through the leaves came a sparrow's song. One long moment passed in hesitation.
Aquipaguetin longed to try a knife in just such use. But Narrhetoba, who held the ax, was of another generation. He had a commercial spirit. He saw a long line of white traders from whom he might gain more in barter than he could from these three by violence. He withheld his hand. By so doing he then and there split the warrior band into two sections—those whose motives were like Aquipaguetin's, robbery through murder; and those who, like Narrhetoba, preferred the safer and greater gain by exploitation.
Father Louis bellowed at them in his biggest pulpit voice. The still aisles of the forest began to resound with his words: "I am resolved to allow myself to be killed without resistance. Behold the example I set you! I come to convert the heathen."
Not one word could his listeners understand. But Narrhetoba nodded his approval of this speech. He liked the spirit of the friar.
Accau began to take on hope for his skin and his goods. Anthony, who had been sweating in cold drops, shook himself warm again and unscrewed his drawn brows. "Perhaps I can placate Aquipaguetin, who is cross at missing his kill." And the boy raised his pistol. In the gaping sight of all he fired into a flock of wild turkeys which was whirling heavily across the open shore space near where the council stood. Two fell from the single shot.
The savages fell upon the game like roaches on a crumb. The feathered victims were pulled and torn apart. Indians who had never seen a gun examined the wonder of that shot. The birds' bones were broken as no arrow could do it. How desirable one of those iron "lightning sticks" would be for crippling an enemy!
Aquipaguetin seemed to be telling them that one gun in the hand was worth any number in the dim future. The braves at Narrhetoba's side snapped back that two guns would not go round. Wait for traders!
Narrhetoba, not looking quite as good a friend as his gestures said he was, soon brought their calumet back to them, made each take a puff, had one himself, and then gave it as a bitter pill to the defeated Aquipaguetin. "Peace among us," was what the smoking meant.
Immediately the canoes were shoved into the water. The explorers were jostled into them as rudely as they had been taken out. Prows were turned up-stream. Anthony took heart. As long as they moved in the direction his duty demanded he could make observations.
Father Louis stood up in the canoe as though he were pronouncing a benediction on those congregated round him and he gravely intoned these words, "I am not sorry to continue the business of making our discoveries in connection with these native inhabitants."
For nineteen of the long, long days of April they were hurried up the river at a furious pace. Peep o' day routed them from their slumbers on the ground. They were given a hasty bit of food and pushed into the canoes. Sometimes they stopped for dinner, sometimes not. Ceaselessly until dusk the paddling continued.
Four miles an hour up-stream! It was a frightful speed! All records for that generation were broken by the muscular Sioux. Ten hours a day! For twice ten days! Anthony grew stupid from the excessive toil. The friar was so jumbled in his note-taking that neither he nor his friends were able to understand some of his words. Poor Accau was worn out with the rough going. "I am always being waked up, yet I never have a chance to go to sleep," he grumbled.
The white men sank exhausted whenever they stopped on shore. But the young Indians, scrawny, sorry-looking specimens whose bodies seemed as despicable as their minds, danced vigorously around the camp-fire half the night singing the same verse of the same song over and over again. The old Indians sat up and applauded by continuous yells until the fires burnt out. Then they stood watch, turn about, until dawn. At sun-up they were wide awake and well started on another day.
Each night Aquipaguetin began a weeping harangue in favor of killing the Frenchmen, only to be out-talked and defrauded of his prey.
Thus through bad days and worse nights the upper Mississippi was first navigated. These three Frenchmen in constant jeopardy discovered and described it. No wonder they named a beautiful body of water they found Lake Pepin (lake of tears) in honor of that sobbing old rascal Aquipaguetin.
Suddenly one day they were set ashore, their canoe smashed, their goods divided among the savage crew, and they themselves herded for a cross-country run.
All that fatigue of rowing upon their arms was as nothing compared with the strain now put upon the white men's legs. Up hill—down dale—over streams—through woods—running—climbing—swimming—they scurried at their best, driven by the tireless savages, who lighted the prairie grass at their heels for the fun of seeing them sprint. Lucky for them that their feet were shod with pluck!
Pell-mell into a native village they came at last. Howling squaws, squealing papooses, yapping dogs burst into chorus to greet them. They saw huts suggesting shelter, steaming pots suggesting food, and a row of tall stakes tied about with dried grass and piled with faggots—suggesting what?
The friar wondered how his name would look written among the martyrs. Accau's eyes followed the goods with which he had been trusted; he would need them no more. Anthony, viewing these preparations for the reception of any prisoners the war party brought, felt as hollow as a drum. "The frying-pan of captivity is better than the fire of those stakes," he thought.
The more frightened a Frenchman is the quicker his wits work, the more his gestures multiply, and the higher his courage rises. The boy stooped and picked up a bunch of feathers blowing near his feet. If he had not seen the feathers he would have taken something else, so short was the time for action and so dire the need.
Into the center of the circle made by the little red blotches of the supper fires he stepped pompously. He thus came into full view of the big chief, Ouasicoude, of all the Sioux. Separating one lock from his curls he thrust a feather half-way into the coil. Apparently intent upon this odd toilet he arranged curl after curl, until the whole tribe, as curious as crows, were giving him their full attention.
Then he turned his irresistible smile toward Ouasicoude and gaily burst into laughter. Still laughing, he began to dance. He changed from laughing into singing—not the slow, mournful, coarse, and angular amusement of the Sioux, but a lively, tuneful jig of Picardy lads.
He was several years older than when he had sung to please the Père Marquette. His voice had settled to a golden barytone. It fell agreeably upon the ears of the most high executioner and he was seized with an idea which at some time or other has awakened in the breast of every king, "Why not have a minstrel at my court?" or, as Ouasicoude put it, "Why not keep loud medicine in my own tepee?"
That Anthony and his companions should live or die, that the trio should be saved to give their discoveries to the world, was nothing to him; that his royal self should be amused was everything.
From the pebble-filled gourd which Aquipaguetin had thrust as a rattle on each of the doomed men, the boy shook out a mocking tune as he danced nearer and nearer to the stakes. At close range he drew his pistol and shot into the dried grass on one of them. As will often happen from such a charge the burning powder set the stuff on fire. It blazed up. Before the astounded savages it consumed itself. This was medicine tremendous! All forgot the original use of the stakes. They wanted this new style of bonfire, and Anthony set them off amid loud applause.