Children's Stories in American History Part 10

There were so many Pilgrims in Holland at this time that they could not all go to America at once, as they did not have enough ships or money to undertake such a voyage; so they chose some of the youngest and strongest who were most willing to go, and one sunny morning in the month of July, 1620, a little ship sailed away from Holland, carrying with it the brave-hearted Pilgrims who were so determined to seek a home across the sea.

The voyage was very long, the weather cold and stormy, and many times the little Mayflower seemed to make no headway against the rough winds and waves; but at last, after long waiting, they saw the sh.o.r.es of the New World. For a month they sailed up and down the coast looking for a good place to land. They had expected to go to the Hudson River, but the storms drove them farther north, and the first land that they saw was the coast of Ma.s.sachusetts.

It was not a very pleasant-looking country--with low sand hills, and no sign of gra.s.s or flower; but the pines looked fresh and green, and the Pilgrims were determined not to be discouraged. They sent little expeditions to the sh.o.r.e to look for a good place to land, and finally one day they all left the ship at a place which Captain John Smith had named Plymouth, and here they resolved to stay.

If you should ever go to Plymouth you would see in the Hall there some of the curious old furniture which the Pilgrims brought with them--old-fashioned armchairs and queer spinning-wheels, ladles, wooden spoons, a great iron dinner-kettle said to have been owned by Miles Standish, and the "samplers" which little Lora Standish worked. Perhaps the thing that you children would like best would be the old-fashioned cradle wherein slept the little Peregrine White, who was born on board the Mayflower. It is not a very fine cradle, not trimmed with silk and dainty laces, but the little English baby slept in it very comfortably, and every one will admit that it is the most interesting cradle in America to-day.

It was on December 21st that the Pilgrims landed, and you can imagine how cold and bleak it was down there by the sea; the first thing they did was to build a house, a large one that would hold them all; and they lived in this until they had time to build separate houses for the different families. These houses were built of logs, having tiny little windows in which oiled paper was put instead of gla.s.s. As soon as they could they built a church, of logs also, with four cannon on the top, to defend it from the Indians.

The Pilgrims had a very hard time of it that first winter, they suffered very much from the cold and from sickness, and, worst of all, they had scarcely enough to eat; nearly one half of them died before spring, but the rest were still not discouraged. They lived on game, killing deer and wild turkeys, and besides, being so near the sea, they could catch fish. As soon as the weather grew warm enough they planted corn, and after that they got along much better.

Seven or eight years after the Pilgrims landed, another company of English people came to America; they, like the Pilgrims, left England because they could not worship there in the way they thought right.

These people were called Puritans, but it made very little difference whether they called themselves Pilgrims or Puritans; they were all alike Englishmen and had come to America for the same purpose; they all suffered the same hardships and endured them bravely, for wherever the Englishman goes he takes a brave heart with him.

The Puritans, looking for a good place for settlement, chose the peninsula of Shawmut, or Tri-mountain, which they found to be a place of "sweet and pleasant springs, and good land affording rich corn-fields and fruitful gardens," and here, in September, 1630, were laid the foundations of the City of Boston.

For many years the colonists could not raise any cattle on account of the wolves which roamed day and night through the forests. The Indians were sometimes friendly and would bring them corn, which the settlers would pay for in clothing, knives, etc.; it is said that once one of the Indians gave a settler a peck of corn in exchange for a little puppy-dog. Whenever food was scarce they all shared alike, so that no one had more than another, and after a time, as they began to raise more crops and as the forests became cleared, they got along very nicely and lived as happily in their log-houses as if they had been marble palaces.

To-day New England is famous for its beautiful villages, with their broad streets shaded with elms and their wide pleasant lawns and comfortable houses; but if you could have seen a New England village two hundred and fifty years ago, it would have been a very different thing.

If you had lived in those days your home would have been a log-house on the edge of a great deep forest. Imagine these little English boys and girls going to bed in a room where the snow could drift in through the cracks, and where they could hear the wolves howling in the forests. How afraid they must have been, and how they must have snuggled under the covers and covered up their faces.

Imagine going to a little church built of logs and having a flag waving from it, and cannon in front of it to protect it from the Indians.

Sometimes the people were called to church by the beating of a drum, and every man carried his musket with him, as no one knew when the Indians might come. In these queer little churches, families did not sit together as they do now, but the men sat in one place, the women in another, and the children in another. There was always a man to keep the children in order, and well he did it too. No child dared smile in church, or he might be rapped on the knuckles for it. Every one had to go to church, whether he wanted to or not; if any one was absent the "t.i.thing man" was sent after him, and for many years after this custom was given up, the New England mothers used to frighten their children by telling them that the "tidy man" was coming when they were naughty.

These children used to go to school in queer little log school-houses, and school was not the pleasant place to them that it is to you.

Everybody had to be as solemn there as possible, and all the pupils used to sit up stiffly and primly, and look as grave as little owls, for the schoolmaster was feared and respected next to the minister, and no New England child in that age would have thought of even smiling if the minister were present. The fathers and mothers were very solemn people too--life was such a serious thing to them, they thought it wicked to waste time amusing children. They did not even keep Christmas for many years, and the Puritan children did not know as much about Santa Claus as you do about the man in the moon.

You must not think, however, that they were unhappy; children always find some means of having a good time, even if fathers and mothers are stern and sober people; and the Puritan fathers and mothers loved their children just as much as the Dutch fathers and mothers in New York loved theirs, only they showed their love in a different way, that is all. And, after all, these little log school-houses were not such bad places--they were always sure to be near the woods, where were great shady trees, and if the children did not sing pretty songs in school as you do, they could at least hear the birds singing all day long; if they had not bright pictures on the walls of the school-room, they had sweet, dainty wild flowers just outside, and the wind and trees and blossoms whispered their secrets to them; and that is one reason perhaps why they grew up so good and true and brave. Thanksgiving Day was the one day in the year on which the Pilgrims did not think it wrong to be merry. Early in the day they went to church, which was held partly as a service of thanks for the harvest, and partly in grateful remembrance for the relief that came to them from England when they were suffering from famine. When church was over the fun began. All the members of a family from near and far were brought together on this day, and what gay times the children had with their small cousins and nieces and nephews. What games and romps, and what interesting talk around the fire as to who had gathered the most nuts, who had built the strongest and swiftest sled, and who had been bravest when the Indians came prowling around.

For of all the troubles which the settlers of New England had to bear, the trouble with the Indians was the worst.

At first they seemed to get along quite peaceably with them; the chiefs of some of the tribes were very friendly and were kind to the colonists; but as time went on the Indians grew more and more unfriendly, and the settlers lived in constant fear of them.

Sometimes they would come in the night to a house where a mother was alone with her children, and kill them all and then set fire to the house. Sometimes a man would be working at a distance from his home, and go back there only to find that the Indians had been there before him, and had taken his wife and children away with them to make slaves of them.

The little children would go to bed at night and lie awake listening for the Indian warwhoop, which they dreaded even more than they did the howling of the wolves. Every woman in those days knew how to use a gun, and many a time a mother had to defend herself and children from some painted Indians who would come up to the house and ask to be taken in.

About forty years after Boston was settled, these difficulties with the Indians brought about a war which extended over all that country. The most powerful of the Indians at that time was King Philip, chief of the Wamponoags. This tribe had always been friendly to the whites, Philip's father, Ma.s.sasoit, having formed a treaty with the Puritans soon after their settlement in New England.

King Philip was a very brave and good man, and for a time after his father's death he remained friendly to the whites; but he saw that, no matter how friendly the whites seemed, they really were trying to get all the land from the Indians that they could, and he thought if he could drive the English away from his country it would be much better for his own people. So he sent messengers to all the tribes from Maine to Connecticut, asking the chiefs to join with him and drive the whites away. All the chiefs promised to do this, and soon there was a terrible war all over New England.

The Indians did not like to fight the whites in open field, but they used to come at night, creeping through the forest in the shadow of the trees, steal down the quiet little village street, and then, with dreadful shrieks and war-whoops, begin their horrible work. Sometimes they would not go away until everybody in the village had been killed, and the houses all burned.

Sometimes they would go to lonely houses where the inmates were all quietly sleeping, and forming themselves into a ring, would dance around the house yelling and waving their torches, and the poor people would be awakened by this noise only to know that death awaited them.

This war lasted nearly two years, and in that time many villages were burned, and many people killed; but finally King Philip was killed, and then the Indians lost heart, and in a short time there was peace again.

For some years after this the colonists had no trouble with the Indians, but after a time war broke out again. This time the Indians were stronger and better armed, and besides they were helped by the French.

For a long time the English and French had each been trying to gain possession of North America. The English said they had the best right to it, and the French said that _they_ had the best right; and so it went on, until the French and Indians agreed that they would join together and fight against the English. The Indians liked the French much better than they did the English, as they had always treated them better.

Some of the French had married Indian wives, and they were looked upon by the Indians as brothers. To this day in Canada you can see little dark-eyed boys and girls, who call themselves French, but whose ancestors were Indian and French.

You will learn later that this struggle between the French and English lasted for more than half a century after the time of which I have been telling, and ended in a great war between the nations, that extended in America all over the country that was then settled. But at last the English gained the day and the French gave up all the country that they had owned in America east of the Mississippi to the English, and that is how this country came to be under English rule.

After the French and Indian wars were over the colonists had very little trouble with the Indians, and in a few years there was peace and quiet all over New England.

CHAPTER XXII.

LA SALLE.

Many stories had been brought by the Indians to the French settlers in Canada, of the great country that lay west of the St. Lawrence and the lakes; and now and then an adventurous trapper had visited the sh.o.r.es of Lake Michigan, and had heard these stories repeated by the tribes living there; and then French priests found their way thither, and by and by it came to be believed that the country in the west was as well worth exploring as the sh.o.r.es of the Atlantic and St. Lawrence; and travellers began to visit the new territory and to trade more extensively with its natives, and to listen with believing ears to their tales of a great river that flowed from the north away and away, hundreds of miles, to the sea.

At that time France was very desirous of discovering a pa.s.sage from the St. Lawrence to the Pacific Ocean, and when this new river began to be so much talked about, it was wondered whether it might not flow into the Pacific. But some people thought differently; they said that they had no doubt the great river flowed directly south and emptied into the Gulf of Mexico; and, after a great deal of talk, it was decided to send an expedition from Canada to find this great river, and to see where it rose and into what it flowed. The princ.i.p.al men in the party were Louis Joliet, who had been sent from France to discover the pa.s.sage to the Pacific, and Father Marquette, a French priest, whose long residence among the Indians, and the love and respect with which he had inspired them, made him a very suitable companion for Joliet.

They left Canada by the way of the St. Lawrence, and, pa.s.sing through the Great Lakes, entered Lake Michigan, and sailed through its waters in Green Bay. At the head of this bay they came to the last French station near Canada. Hereafter their journey would be entirely among tribes of strange Indians. But at the little settlement on Green Bay they saw a cross that had been erected by some French priest, and which the natives had adorned with flowers; and, encouraged by the thought that even on the farthest limit of French territory they were leaving friends, they started bravely for the undiscovered country, taking with them two Indian lads to show them the way to the Wisconsin River. Their canoes sailed up the beautiful waters of the Fox, whose fresh green banks and bordering trees gave promise of leading into a fair land beyond, and in a short time they had reached its head, and pushed out into the narrow channel, almost choked with wild rice, that led to the Wisconsin. The guides left them as soon as their canoes floated into the current of the larger river, and then their voyage began in earnest.

They drifted down the Wisconsin for a week, examining the country carefully on both sides, and always looking out for the great river they had come to find; and at the end of this time they saw, to their great joy, the shining waters of the Mississippi spreading out before them.

And now they were obliged to go more carefully for fear of hostile Indians; they no longer spent their nights on the banks of the river, sleeping comfortably around a blazing camp-fire, but anch.o.r.ed their canoes out from sh.o.r.e, and stationed a sentinel to warn them of any danger that might come while they slept. Day after day they scanned the river-banks for sight of lurking foes, and night after night they rolled themselves in their blankets and went to sleep, expecting to be awakened by the war-whoop of the Indians; but, search as they might, they could find no trace of human beings along the river, and eight days pa.s.sed before they saw a sign of friend or foe. On the ninth day they saw a well-worn path leading up from the river into the forest beyond. Joliet and Marquette sprang from their canoes and started up the path, while the rest of the party remained on the river to guard against surprise.

A short walk brought the leaders to the Indian village, which they were glad to find occupied by the friendly tribe of the Illinois. The chief welcomed them with uplifted hands, in token of friendly greeting, while his warriors gathered around him and waved the pipe of peace. And hardly had the Frenchmen responded to these greetings, when there came an invitation from the head chief of the whole tribe for the strangers to come to his village. They found him standing in front of his wigwam, with his calumet, or pipe of peace, raised toward the sun. He saluted them with a kiss, and invited them into his dwelling, where a banquet had been prepared. After partaking of this, the Frenchmen were escorted through the village by the entire population, who accompanied them to their canoes and stood on the banks while they embarked. Then, as they pushed out from sh.o.r.e, they waved them pleasant farewells, and the visitors went away delighted with their kind welcome. The chief had given Marquette his calumet, which was carefully preserved, as he knew it would be of value in dealing with other tribes.

And then they went on down the river, past the curious Painted Rocks and the mighty forests and rolling prairies, and saw one day another large river flowing from the west--a rushing, mighty river, with turbid, yellow waves that would not mix with the clear waters of the Mississippi; Marquette thought that perhaps this new stream might lead him to the western ocean, if he would trust his frail canoe to its guidance, and the Indians whom he found there said that it was quite true that the yellow river would take him into the distant prairies, which he could easily cross, carrying his canoe on his shoulders, and that a short journey would bring him to another little stream which led into a small lake, from which started a deep river that flowed westward into the sea.

But, although this sounded like very pleasant travelling, Marquette could not leave his companions just then, and they continued their voyage down the Mississippi, pa.s.sing the Ohio and Arkansas; at which latter point, discouraged by the reports of the hostile tribes who lived farther down, and afraid of falling into the hands of the Spaniards if they reached the Gulf, they turned back and began a leisurely ascent of the Mississippi.

They turned into the Illinois when they reached that river, and journeyed up its winding course, delighted with its fertile basin, rich with fine forests, cattle, deer, goats, and beaver, and beautiful with clear streams and lovely lakes, on which floated great numbers of swans.

When they reached the head of the river, an Indian chief guided them through the forests to Green Bay, which they reached in September, well satisfied with their journey, and convinced that the Mississippi led to the Gulf of Mexico.

Joliet no sooner told the story of his expedition than a gentleman of Normandy living in Canada resolved to undertake a journey to the mouth of the Mississippi, and to the Pacific. This man was Robert Cavalier de la Salle, and in August, 1679, he left Canada equipped for a voyage down the Mississippi; but, being detained by the loss of his vessel and an attack of the Iroquois upon the Illinois, who were the friends of the French, it was two years after that date, 1681, before he found himself actually on his way.

They left by the way of the Chicago River, which they travelled down in sledges, the river being frozen over, and even when they reached the Mississippi they were detained some days by the ice; but at last they were able to begin the descent, and, like the former expedition, pa.s.sed many days before they came to an Indian village that was inhabited.

The first notice they had of their approach to a settlement came from the drums and war-cries of the people who had a.s.sembled on the bank. La Salle immediately landed on the other side of the river; and, setting his men to work, they soon had a fort built, and were prepared to defend themselves. The Indians, seeing this, changed their tactics, and sent some messengers across the river in a canoe. La Salle went down to the sh.o.r.e carrying the calumet, which was received by the savages with respect, and friendly feeling was at once established.

The Frenchmen were very glad of this, as during the three days they spent there they learned many things about the Indians farther down the river, and were also well supplied with food for their journey; for this village was situated in the midst of orchards and fields, and the people were very intelligent and courteous, having pleasant manners, and being liberal and hospitable. La Salle planted a cross bearing the arms of France, and parted from his new friends with many expressions of grat.i.tude. The Indians sent with him some interpreters, who introduced him to a friendly tribe some distance farther down, and La Salle found these Indians also very intelligent and hospitable. He describes their houses as being built of mud and straw, with cane roofs, and furnished with bedsteads, tables, etc. They also had temples where their chiefs were buried, and wore white clothing spun from the bark of a tree. These were very different habits from those that La Salle had seen among the Indians in the north, and he concluded that he must be nearing the end of his journey.

This proved to be true, for two weeks after he found the river dividing into three branches; he took one branch and two of his men the others, and in a short time they found that the water was salt, and knew that they had reached the mouth of the river; a little farther on they saw the sea, and found that they had reached the Gulf of Mexico by the way of the Mississippi.

On April 9, 1682, a cross was raised, upon which were inscribed the arms of France; then, after a religious ceremony, La Salle took possession of the Mississippi and all its branches, together with all the lands bordering them, in the name of the king of France. A few days after he turned his face homeward; but, being detained by sickness, did not reach Quebec until the next year. However, he had sent the accounts of his voyage on before him, and these had been forwarded to France; and, after some delay, a new expedition left France, whither La Salle had gone; the object of this expedition was to found a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi.

All might have gone well, had it not been for the jealousy of Beaujeu, the captain of the fleet, who refused to follow La Salle's advice about landing. As they coasted along the Gulf, from their ignorance of the coast, they pa.s.sed the mouth of the Mississippi, and went farther westward than they had meant to. La Salle wished to turn back and search for the mouth of the river, but Beaujeu refused to do this, and insisted upon entering Matagorda Bay in Texas. Here La Salle was obliged to have his stores landed; and, as soon as this was done, Beaujeu sailed back to France again, caring little what became of his fellow-voyagers.