Heroes of the Middle West Part 2

"I declare to you that G.o.d, your Creator, has pity on you, since, when you have been so long ignorant of him, he wishes to become known to you.

I am sent on his behalf with this design. It is for you to acknowledge and obey him."

By the third gift they were informed that the chief of the French had spread peace and overcome the Iroquois. And the last begged for all the information they could give about the sea and intervening nations.

When Marquette sat down, the chief stood up and laid his hand on the head of a little slave, prisoner from another tribe.

"I thank you, Blackgown," he said, "and you, Frenchman, for taking so much pains to come and visit us. The earth has never been so beautiful, nor the sun so bright, as to-day; never has the river been so calm and free from rocks, which your canoes removed as they pa.s.sed! Never has our tobacco had so fine a flavor, nor our corn appeared so beautiful as we find it to-day. Here is my son. I give him to you that you may know my heart. Take pity on us and all our nation. You know the Great Spirit who made all: you speak to him and hear him; ask him to give us life and health and come and dwell with us."

When the chief had presented his guests with the Indian boy, and again offered the calumet, he urged them, with belts and garters of buffalo wool, brilliantly dyed, to go no farther down the great river, on account of dangers. These compliments being ended, a feast was brought in four courses. First came a wooden dish of sagamity or corn-meal boiled in water and grease. The chief took a buffalo-horn spoon and fed his guests as if they had been little children; three or four spoonfuls he put in Marquette's mouth and three or four spoonfuls in Jolliet's.

Three fish were brought next, and he picked out the bones with his own fingers, blew on the food to cool it, and stuffed the explorers with all he could make them accept. It was their part to open their mouths as young birds do. The third course was that most delicate of Indian dishes, a fine dog; but seeing that his guests shrank from this, the chief ended the meal with buffalo meat, giving them the fattest parts.

The Illinois were at that time on the west side of the Mississippi, because they had been driven from their own country on the Illinois River by the Iroquois. The Illinois nation was made up of several united tribes: Kaskaskias, Peorias, Kahokias, Tamaroas, and Moingona. Flight scattered them, and these were only a few of their villages. They afterwards returned to their own land. Their chief wore a scarf or belt of fur crossing his left shoulder, encircling his waist and hanging in fringe. Arm and leg bands ornamented him, and he also had knee rattles of deer hoofs. Paint made of colored clays streaked his face. This attractive creature sent the Indian crier around, beating a drum of deer hide stretched over a pot, to proclaim the calumet dance in honor of the explorers.

Marquette and Jolliet were led out in the prairie to a small grove which sheltered the a.s.sembly from the afternoon sun. Even the women left their maize fields and the beans, melons, and squashes that they were cultivating, and old squaws dropped rush braiding, and with papooses swarming about their knees, followed. The Illinois were nimble, well-formed people, skillful with bow and arrow. They had, moreover, some guns among them, obtained from allies who had roved and traded with the French. Young braves imitated the gravity of their elders at this important ceremony. The Illinois never ate new fruits or bathed at the beginning of summer, without first dancing the calumet.

A large gay mat of rushes was spread in the center of the grove, and the warrior selected to dance put his G.o.d, or manitou--some tiny carven image which he carried around his person and to which he prayed--on the mat beside a beautiful calumet. Around them he spread his bow and arrows, his war club, and stone hatchet. The pipe was made of red rock like brilliantly polished marble, hollowed to hold tobacco. A stick two feet long, as thick as a cane, formed the stem. For the dance these pipes were often decked with gorgeous scarlet, green, and iridescent feathers, though white plumes alone made them the symbol of peace, and red quills bristled over them for war.

[Ill.u.s.tration: War Club.]

Young squaws and braves who were to sing, sat down on the ground in a group near the mat; but the mult.i.tude spread in a great circle around it. Men of importance before taking their seats on the short gra.s.s, each in turn lifted the calumet, which was filled, and blew a little smoke on the manitou. Then the dancer sprang out, and, with graceful curvings in time to the music, seized the pipe and offered it now to the sun and now to the earth, made it dance from mouth to mouth along the lines of spectators, with all its fluttering plumes spread. The hazy sun shone slanting among branches, tracing a network of flickering leaf shadows on short gra.s.s; and liquid young voices rising and falling chanted,

"Nanahani, nanahani, nanahani, Naniango!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: Stone Hatchet.]

The singers were joined by the Indian drum; and at that another dancer sprang into the circle and took the weapons from the mat to fight with the princ.i.p.al dancer, who had no defense but the calumet. With measured steps and a floating motion of the body the two advanced and attacked, parried and retreated, until the man with the pipe drove his enemy from the ring. Papooses of a dark brick-red color watched with glistening black eyes the last part of the dance, which celebrated victory. The names of nations fought, the prisoners taken, and all the trophies brought home were paraded by means of the calumet.

The chief presented the dancer with a fine fur robe when he ended; and, taking the calumet from his hand, gave it to an old man in the circle.

This one pa.s.sed it to the next, and so it went around the huge ring until all had held it. Then the chief approached the white men.

"Blackgown," he said, "and you, Frenchman, I give you this peace-pipe to be your safeguard wherever you go among the tribes. It shall be feathered with white plumes, and displaying it you may march fearlessly among enemies. It has power of life and death, and honor is paid to it as to a manitou. Blackgown, I give you this calumet in token of peace between your governor and the Illinois, and to remind you of your promise to come again and instruct us in your religion."

The explorers slept soundly all night in the chief's lodge, feeling as safe as among Christian Indians of the north, who stuck thorns in a calendar to mark Sundays and holy days. Next morning the chief went with several hundred of his people to escort them to their canoes; but it was three o'clock in the afternoon before the voyageurs, dropping down stream, saw the last of the friendly tribe.

Day after day the boats moved on without meeting other inhabitants.

Mulberries, persimmons, and hazelnuts were found on the sh.o.r.es. They pa.s.sed the mouth of the Illinois River without knowing its name, or that it flowed through lands owned by the tribe that had given them the peace-pipe. Farther on, the Mississippi made one of its many bends, carrying them awhile directly eastward, and below great rocks like castles. As the canoes ran along the foot of this east sh.o.r.e, some of the voyageurs cried out. For on the face of the cliff far up were two painted monsters in glaring red, green, and black; each as large as a calf, with deer horns, blood-colored eyes, tiger beard, a human face, and a body covered with scales. Coiled twice around the middle, over the head, and pa.s.sing between the hind legs of each, extended a tail that ended like a fish. So startling was this sight, which seemed a banner held aloft heralding unseen dangers, that the men felt threatened by a demon. But Marquette laughed at them and beckoned for the canoes to be brought together.

"What manner of thing is this, Sieur Jolliet?"

"A pair of manitous, evidently. If we had Indians with us, we should see them toss a little tobacco out as an offering in pa.s.sing by."

"I cannot think," said Marquette, "that any Indian has been the designer. Good painters in France would find it hard to do as well.

Besides this, the creatures are so high upon the rock that it was hard to get conveniently at them to paint them. And how could such colors be mixed in this wilderness?"

"We have seen what pigments and clays the Illinois used in daubing themselves. These wild tribes may have among them men with natural skill in delineating," said Jolliet.

"I will draw them off," Marquette determined, bringing out the papers on which he set down his notes; and while the men stuck their paddles in the water to hold the canoes against the current, he made his drawing.

One of the monsters seen by the explorers remained on those rocks until the middle of our own century. It was called by the Indians the Piasa.

More than two centuries of beating winter storms had not effaced the brilliant picture when it was quarried away by a stupidly barbarous civilization. The town of Alton, in the state of Illinois, is a little south of that rock where the Piasa dragons were seen.

As the explorers moved ahead on gla.s.sy waters, they looked back, and the line of vision changing, they saw that the figures were cut into the cliff and painted in hollow relief.

They were still talking about the monsters when they heard the roar of a rapid ahead, and the limpid Mississippi turned southward on its course.

It was as if they had never seen the great river until this instant.

For a mighty flood, rushing through banks from the west, yellow with mud, noisy as a storm, eddying islands of branches, stumps, whole trees, took possession of the fair stream they had followed so long. It shot across the current of the Mississippi in entering so that the canoes danced like eggsh.e.l.ls and were dangerously forced to the eastern bank.

Afterwards they learned that this was the Pekitanoui, or, as we now call it, the Missouri River, which flows into the Mississippi not far above the present city of St. Louis; and that by following it to its head waters and making a short portage across a prairie, a man might in time enter the Red or Vermilion Sea of California.

Having slipped out of the Missouri's reach, the explorers were next threatened by a whirlpool among rocks before they reached the mouth of Ouaboukigou, the Ohio River. They saw purple, red, and violet earths, which ran down in streams of color when wet, and a sand which stained their paddles like blood. Tall canes began to feather the sh.o.r.e, and mosquitoes tormented them as they pressed on through languors of heat.

Jolliet and Marquette made awnings of sails which they had brought as a help to the paddles. They were floating down the current of the muddy, swollen river when they saw Indians with guns on the east sh.o.r.e. The voyageurs dropped their paddles and seized their own weapons. Marquette stood up and spoke to the Indians in Huron. They made no answer. He held up the white calumet. Then they began to beckon, and when the party drew to land, they made it clear that they had themselves been frightened until they saw the Blackrobe holding the calumet. A long-haired tribe, somewhat resembling the Iroquois, but calling themselves Tuscaroras; they were rovers, and had axes, hoes, knives, beads, and double gla.s.s bottles holding gunpowder, for which they had traded with white people eastward.

They fed the French with buffalo meat and white plums, and declared it was but a ten days' journey to the sea. In this they were mistaken, for it was more than a thousand miles to the Gulf of Mexico.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Wampum Girdle.]

To each tribe as he pa.s.sed, Marquette preached his faith by the belt of the prayer. For each he had a wampum girdle to hold while he talked, and to leave for a remembrance. His words without a witness would be forgotten.

Three hundred miles farther the explorers ventured, and had nearly reached the mouth of the Arkansas River, floating on a wide expanse of water between lofty woods, when they heard wild yelling on the west sh.o.r.e, and saw a crowd of savages pushing out huge wooden canoes to surround them. Some swam to seize the Frenchmen, and a war club was thrown over their heads. Marquette held up the peace-pipe, but the wild young braves in the water paid no attention to it. Arrows were ready to fly from all sides, and Marquette held the peace-pipe on high and continually prayed. At once old Indians restrained the young ones. In their turmoil they had not at first seen the calumet; but two chiefs came directly out to bring the strangers ash.o.r.e.

Not one of the missionary's six languages was understood by these Indians. He at last found a man who spoke a little Illinois, and Jolliet and he were able to explain their errand. He preached by presents, and obtained a guide to the next nation.

On that part of the river where the French came to a halt, the Spanish explorer De Soto was said to have died two hundred years before. In this region the Indians had never seen snow, and their land yielded three crops a year. Their pots and plates were of baked earth, and they kept corn in huge gourds, or in baskets woven of cane fibers. They knew nothing of beaver skins; their furs were the hides of buffaloes.

Watermelons grew abundantly in their fields. Though they had large wigwams of bark, they wore no clothing, and hung beads from their pierced noses and ears.

These Akamsea, or Arkansas Indians showed traits of the Aztecs under Spanish dominion; for what is now the state of Texas was then claimed by Spain. Marquette and Jolliet held a council. They were certain that the great river discharged itself into the Gulf of Mexico. If they ventured farther, they might fall into the hands of Spaniards, who would imprison them; or they might be killed by fiercer tribes than any yet encountered, and in either case their discoveries would be lost. So they decided to turn back.

All day the Arkansas feasted them with merciless savage hospitality, and it was not polite to refuse food or the attention of rocking. Two stout Indians would seize a voyageur between them and rock him back and forth for hours. If the motion nauseated him, that was his misfortune.

Pierre Porteret crept out behind one of the bark lodges looking very miserable in the fog of early morning. His companion on many a long journey, never far out of his shadow, sat down to compare experiences.

"Did they rock thee all night, Pierre?"

"They rocked me all night, Jacques. I can well endure what most men can, but this is carrying politeness too far."

"I was not so favored. They would have saved you if they had killed the rest of us. And they would have saved the good father, no doubt, since the chief came and danced the calumet before him."

"Were these red cradle-rockers intending to make an end of us in the night?"

"So the chief says; but he broke up the council, and will set us safely on our journey up river to-day."

"I am glad of that," said Pierre. "Father Marquette hath not the strength of the Sieur Jolliet for such rude wanderings. These southern mists, and torturing insects, and clammy heats, and the bad food have worked a great change in him."

"We have been gone but two months from the Mission of St. Ignace," said Jacques. "They have the bigness of years."

"And many more months that have the bigness of years will pa.s.s before we see it again."

They grew more certain of this, when, after toiling up the current through malarial nights and sweltering days, the explorers left the Mississippi and entered the river Illinois. There, above Peoria Lake, another Illinois town of seventy-four lodges was found, and these Kaskaskias so clung to the Blackrobe that he promised to come back and teach them. From the head waters of the Illinois a portage was made to Lake Michigan, and the French returned to the Bay of the Puans alongsh.o.r.e. They had traveled over twenty-five hundred miles, and accomplished the object of their journey.