From the Cenis villages, where they bought five horses, the Frenchmen went as far, perhaps, as the Sabine River, encamped there for two months, detained by La Salle's illness with fever, and then, on account of their weakened condition, returned to Fort St. Louis.
A deeper pall of gloom settled upon the little band of exiles. They had now been two years on that forlorn spot, and still they had not even found their way out. From one hundred and eighty their number had dwindled to forty-five. Clearly, there was but one thing to be done. If anybody was to remain alive, the journey to Canada must be accomplished, at all costs. This time La Salle determined to take Joutel with him, leaving Barbier in command of the little party in the fort.
The New Year, 1687, came, and a few days later, with sighs and tears, the parting took place which many felt was for all time, and the travelers went away in mournful silence, with their meagre outfit packed on the horses, leaving Barbier to hold the fort with his little band of twenty persons, including all the women and children and a few disabled men.
We shall not attempt to trace closely the movements of the travelers. For more than two months they journeyed in a northeasterly direction. At the best, they were in wretched plight, with nothing for shoes but raw buffalo-hide, which hardened about the foot and held it in the grip of a vise. After a while they bought dresseddeerskin from the Indians and made themselves moccasins. Rivers and streams they crossed, two or three at a time, in a boat made of buffalo-hide, while the horses swam after them. They met Indians almost daily and held friendly intercourse with them.[2]
Once they saw a band of a hundred and fifty warriors attacking a herd of buffalo with lances, and a stirring sight it was. These warriors entertained the Europeans most handsomely. Says La Salle's brother, the priest Cavelier, "They took us straight to the cabin of their great chief or captain, where they first washed our hands, our heads, and our feet with warm water; after which they presented us boiled and roast meat to eat, and an unknown fish, cooked whole, that was six feet long, laid in a dish of its length. It was of a wonderful taste, and we preferred it to meat." Here the way-worn travelers were glad to buy thirty horses—enough to give every one of them a mount, and to carry their baggage besides—all for thirty knives, ten hatchets, and six dozen needles!
In one of the villages they witnessed the catching of an alligator twelve feet long on a large hook made of bone and baited with meat. The Indians amused themselves an entire day with torturing it. They would have been keenly disappointed, had they known how little this animal, so low in the scale of life as to be almost insensible to pain, suffered from their ingenious cruelty.
The Colorado and the Trinity were reached. A deluge of rain kept them weather-bound for four or five days. It was a gloomy time. What added fuel to the flame was that La Salle had with him a young nephew, named Moranget, who presumed on his relation to the leader and behaved most overbearingly to the men.
One day it chanced that some of the men were separated from the main body when Nika killed two buffaloes. They sent word to La Salle, in order that he might have the meat brought in on the horses. Accordingly, he dispatched his nephew, Moranget, with two other men, for that purpose. This was just the opportunity the malcontents desired. Besides, Moranget incensed them by flying into a passion because they had reserved certain portions of the meat for themselves, and by seizing the whole of it. They laid their plansand, in the dead of the night, murdered him, La Salle's servant Saget, and his faithful Indian, Nika.
Now they had to choose between killing La Salle and being killed by him, as soon as he should learn the facts. They laid an ambush for him, and when he came in the morning to look after the missing men, they shot him dead. Then the murderers stripped his body, dragged it into the bushes, and left it to be torn by buzzards.
Thus died, in the prime of his manhood, one who had done more than any other toward the opening of our continent. He had traversed regions where white men were almost unheard of. He had launched the first vessel that ever floated on the vast inland seas above Niagara Falls. He had established the French in the Illinois region, opening the way for the possession of the Mississippi Valley. He had drawn hostile Indian tribes together into a league strong enough to resist the Long House. He had traveled thousands and thousands of miles on foot and by canoe. He had led the first party of white men from the Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. His foresight had grasped the commercial value of the Mississippi Valley, and, triumphing over enormous difficulties, he had opened the GreatWest to our race. And now all his greatness was come to this, to die in the wilderness by an assassin's hand!
After the death of the leader, a little party, among whom were Joutel and La Salle's brother, the friar Cavelier, after many strange experiences, finally made their way down the Arkansas River to the Mississippi. There, to their inexpressible joy, they found two of their countrymen who had been left there by Tonty. That brave man and loyal friend, when he received the news, by the way of France, of his former leader's disastrous landing, had at once, at his own expense, fitted out an expedition and led it down the Illinois to the mouth of the Mississippi. Of course, he did not find La Salle or any trace of him there. He had then returned to his post, leaving some of his men at the mouth of the Arkansas. These escorted the survivors of La Salle's party to Canada, whence they sailed to France, having made one of the most remarkable journeys on record. They arrived in Europe, the sole known survivors of the expedition that had left France three years before.
Louis the Great, when he heard the news of the failure of the enterprise, took no steps torelieve the forlorn little band of exiles on the coast of Texas. Not so Tonty. That brave soul determined to rescue them, if possible. For the third time he voyaged down the Mississippi, turned up the Red River, and penetrated as far as the country of the Caddoes.[3] There he lost the most of his ammunition in crossing a river, his men mutinied and refused to go further, and he was compelled to turn back. On his way down the Red River he encountered a flood and traveled more than a hundred miles through country covered with water. The party slept on logs laid side by side and were reduced to eating their dogs. Few men who figure in our country's early story are more deserving of honorable remembrance than this man with one hand and with the heart of a lion.
The French King neglected the exiles in Texas, but the Spanish King did not. He ordered a force sent from Mexico, to destroy the nest of invaders. When the Spanish soldiers arrived on the spot, not a human being was to be seen. The poor little fort was a ruin, and a fewskeletons were all that remained of its former inmates. The Indians in the neighborhood told a story of a band of warriors who had entrapped the garrison into opening the gates, on the plea of trading, and then had rushed in and massacred them.
The Murder of La SalleThe Murder of La Salle
The Murder of La SalleThe Murder of La Salle
Thus ended, for the time, La Salle's brilliant scheme of colonizing Louisiana.
The Executor of La Salle's Plan of Colonization.—First Experiences of the Settlers.—Bienville's Shrewdness in getting rid of the English.—New Orleans Founded.—Character of the Population.—Indian Wars.
La Salle was dead, but his bright dream of France enthroned on the Mississippi, holding in her hand the sceptre of the great West, was too vital to die. It was growing more and more into the consciousness of sea-going Europe, that the nation holding the mouth of the Great River would grasp the key to the undeveloped wealth of the Western World. So it was that when France stretched forth her hand to seize the coveted prize, she found rivals in the field, Spain andGreat Britain struggling for a foothold, Spain already planted at Pensacola, the English nosing about the mouth of the Mississippi.
The man who was destined to achieve what La Salle had been hindered from accomplishing only by the blunder of his pilots and the jealousy of his associates, was Jean Baptiste LeMoyne de Bienville.
He was of that fine French Canadian stock that had already produced Joliet, the brave explorer, and he belonged to a family whose seven sons all won distinction, four of them dying in the service of their country. When he came on the enterprise in which he was destined to complete La Salle's unfinished work, he was a midshipman of twenty-two serving with his older brother, Iberville, who was winning renown as a brave and skilful naval captain. Though possessing none of La Salle's brilliancy of genius, and never called on to make those heroic exertions or to exhibit that amazing fortitude which were so conspicuous in the case of the great explorer, he still exhibited qualities which well fitted him for the task that fell to him, and which earned for him the title of "Father of Louisiana."
To us it may seem strange that the firstreaching out of France toward the incredibly rich Mississippi Valley did not touch the valley itself, but made its lodgment on a sandy bluff overlooking a bay in the territory of what is now the State of Mississippi. So it was, however, and the fact only shows how little was grasped the true meaning of La Salle's gigantic scheme.
In January, 1699, fifteen years after the great Pathfinder had made his misguided landing in Texas, a small fleet from Brest was hovering about the mouth of Mobile River seeking a place for settlement. It was commanded by Pierre LeMoyne d'Iberville. With him were his two brothers, Sauvolle and Bienville, and Father Anastase Douay, who had accompanied La Salle.
One of the first spots which the Frenchmen visited bore evidences of a ghastly tragedy. So numerous were the human bones bleaching on the sandy soil that they called it Massacre Island (to-day Dauphin Island). It was surmised—and with some plausibility—that here had perished some portion of the ill-fated following of Pamphile de Narvaez. (See "Pioneer Spaniards in North America," p. 200.)
Another island, farther to the west, chiefly impressed the visitors by the great number ofanimals, of a species new to them, which they found there. Isle des Chats they called it, and as "Cat Island" it is known to this day. Had the Frenchmen been naturalists, they would have seen that there was more of the bear than of the cat about this creature, for it was none other than our sly friend, the raccoon.
Leaving his vessels at anchor near the mouth of Mobile River, Iberville, with his brother Bienville and Father Douay, went in search of the mouth of the Mississippi. They found it and ascended the river a considerable distance. What assured them that they really were on the Great River was that they received from the Bayagoulas a letter which Tonty had left with them for La Salle, when he made, in 1686, that heroic journey all the way from the Illinois country to the Gulf, in the vain effort to succor his chief.
Another interesting relic which the explorers are said to have seen, was a coat of mail shown to them by the Indians near the Red River, as once having belonged to a Spaniard. Though nearly one hundred and sixty years had gone by since Hernando de Soto's famous expedition, it is by no means improbable that this was a genuine relic of that enterprise. Naturally, theIndians would have highly prized and would have kept, as a precious trophy, such a reminder of their forefathers' heroic stand against the dastardly invaders.
The appearance on the river of the two English vessels, whose captain frankly said that he was seeking a place for a settlement, was conclusive evidence that France was none too early in reaching out for the prize that others coveted. Bienville has the credit of getting rid of the Britons by telling the officer that he might easily judge how numerous and strong were his master's, the French King's, subjects, in that region, from seeing them on the river in small boats—a piece of reasoning which was rather ingenious than ingenuous. It had its effect in sending away the Briton with "a flea in his ear." "English Turn," the name given to a great bend in the stream some miles below New Orleans, keeps alive the memory of that piece of shrewdness. Not far distant, by the way, is the field where, in 1815, the British regulars, under Sir Edward Pakenham, received a disastrous defeat at the hands of Andrew Jackson and his American riflemen.
Iberville planted his first settlement at Biloxi,on Mississippi Sound. Other French posts were shortly afterward established on Cat Island, Dauphin Island, which is at the mouth of Mobile Bay, and at Mobile. A little later Bienville built a fort fifty-four miles above the mouth of the Great River, and he early began to insist that the future of the colony lay on its banks, not on the shores and sandy islands of the Gulf. But the time had not yet come when his ideas would prevail. The wretched colony must first go through a dismal experience of languishing, in consequence of which the seat of government was removed to Mobile, and of actual famine.
At last, in 1718, Bienville, who by the death of his brother had succeeded to the direction of affairs, with twenty-five convicts from France and as many carpenters and some voyageurs from the Illinois River, founded the city of New Orleans.
At the first the outlook was far from hopeful. The site was but a few feet above the sea-level and was subject to constant inundation. Most unfavorable reports went back to Mobile, which for five years longer remained the seat of government. The population, too, was rude and lawless, being made up of trappers, redemptioners having a period of years to serve, transportedfemales, inmates of the House of Correction, Choctaw squaws, and negro slave women—all, as an old writer says, "without religion, without justice, without discipline, without order, without police."
Bienville, however, held firmly to his purpose and, in 1723, procured the royal permission to transfer the seat of government from Mobile to the new settlement on the banks of the Great River. Thus, at last, was La Salle's prophetic dream realized. France had become awake to the importance of concentrating her strength where it could be effective, rather than frittering it away on the shores of the Gulf.
One of the most striking evidences of the warm interest which the King felt in the colony was his sending out, in 1728, a number of decent girls, each with a trunk filled with linen and clothing (from which they were calledfilles à la cassette, or girls with a chest), who were to be disposed of under the direction of the Ursuline nuns, in marriage to the colonists. Other consignments followed; and the homes thus established soon gave to the population of the city a more quiet and orderly character.
Le Moyne de BienvilleLe Moyne de Bienville
Le Moyne de BienvilleLe Moyne de Bienville
Through various experiences, chiefly disastrous wars with the Natchez, that remarkable peoplewhom La Salle visited on his great exploration, and whom the French finally broke up and scattered, and with the Chickasaws in Mississippi, that hardy breed of warriors who had fought Soto so fiercely, and who now sent the Frenchmen back discomfited, Bienville in his later years lost much of his earlier prestige. But the fact remains that it was he who grasped the meaning of La Salle's plan, he who founded New Orleans, and he who guided the struggling colony through its perilous infancy. He well earned his title of "Father of Louisiana."
[1] These matchless horsemen, probably unsurpassed in the world, are also great jockeys, passionately fond of horse-racing and deeply versed in all its tricks. The following laughable account of a race that he witnessed is given by Col. Dodge in his very entertaining book, "Our Wild Indians": "A band of Comanches once camped near Fort Chadbourne, in Texas. Some of the officers were decidedly 'horsey,' owning blood horses whose relative speed was well known. The Comanche chief was bantered for a race, and, after several days of manoeuvring, a race was made against the third best horse of the garrison, distance four hundred yards.
"The Indians wagered robes and plunder of various kinds, to the value of sixty or seventy dollars, against money, flour, sugar, etc., to a like amount. At the appointed time the Indians 'showed' a miserable sheep of a pony, with legs like churns, a three-inch coat of rough hair stuck out all over the body; and a general expression of neglect, helplessness, and patient suffering struck pity into the hearts of all beholders. The rider was a stalwart buck of one hundred and seventy pounds, looking big and strong enough to carry the poor beast on his shoulders. He was armed with a huge club, with which, after the word was given, he belabored the miserable animal from start to finish. To the astonishment of all the whites, the Indian won by a neck.
"Another race was proposed by the officers, and, after much 'dickering,' accepted by the Indians, against the next best horse of the garrison. The bets were doubled; and in less than an hour the second race was run by the same pony, with the same apparent exertion and with exactly the same result.
"The officers, thoroughly disgusted, proposed a third race and brought to the ground a magnificent Kentucky mare, of the true Lexington blood. The Indians accepted the race and not only doubled bets as before, but piled up everything they could raise, seemingly almost crazed with the excitement of their previous success. The riders mounted, and the word was given. Throwing away his club, the Indian rider gave a whoop, at which the sheep-like pony pricked up his ears and went away like the wind almost two feet to the mare's one. The last fifty yards of the course was run by the pony with the rider sitting face to his tail, making hideous grimaces and beckoning to the rider of the mare to come on.
"It afterwards transpired that the old sheep was a trick and straight-race pony, celebrated among all the tribes of the south, and had lately won for his master six hundred ponies among the Kickapoos of the Indian Nation."
[2] They learned from these Indians to handle skin-boats, or "bull-boats," such as we shall see were in constant use among the Mandans of the upper Missouri.
[3] These people, sometimes called the Pawnee family, were scattered, in various wandering bands, from eastern Texas as far north as the Missouri.
His Birth and Early Experiences.—His Description of Niagara Falls.—His Great Fraud.—His Real Achievement.—Captured by the Sioux.—Given to a Master.—Superstitious Fears of the Indians.—Goes with a Hunting Party.—Sees and names the Falls of St. Anthony.—Various Adventures.—Rescued and Freed.
We come now to tell the story of a man who was neither great nor good, but was a most picturesque and entertaining scamp, and who withal deserves some small place among the Pathfinders.
Imagine a burly friar, in robe of rough gray frieze, his head covered by a pointed hood, his otherwise bare feet protected by sandals, in his hand a stout cudgel, shuffling along on snow-shoes and dragging his scanty possessions on a sled, or, if it was summer, paddling his canoe from one lonely cabin to another, celebrating mass wherever he could get together a half-dozen people, telling them the gossip of the river, eating a robust meal, then pushing on to repeat theexperience elsewhere, and you will have a good picture of Father Louis Hennepin, a man whose books describing his travels, real or imaginary, had, in their day, the widest popularity in Europe. Though he was an unconscionable braggart, and though he had no scruples about falsifying facts, yet, as the first person to publish an account of the Falls of Niagara, and as the discoverer and namer of the Falls of St. Anthony, he is fairly entitled to a place in a collection like this.
He was born in Belgium, about 1640, and in due time joined the Franciscan monks. When he tells us that he was so passionately fond of tales of adventure that he often skulked behind tavern-doors, though he was sickened by the tobacco smoke, eagerly hanging on the words of the old tars spinning yarns to each other, we do not wonder at finding him on his way to the land of wonders, the New World, making the voyage in company with La Salle. The wilderness, full of hardships and haunted by treacherous savages though it was, had a fascination for him, and we soon find him serving as an itinerant missionary on the frontier.
His experience in this work recommended him for appointment as missionary at that loneliest ofoutposts, La Salle's Fort Frontenac. When La Salle returned successful from his efforts to interest the court in his gigantic scheme of exploration, Father Hennepin was selected to accompany him as the representative of the Church. In preparation for the great undertaking, he was sent ahead with La Motte, an officer in La Salle's service, to Fort Frontenac, whence they proceeded in a small sailing vessel to Niagara River, under orders to build a fort that was intended to be a link in the chain of posts that La Salle purposed establishing.
Niagara Falls—"a vast and prodigious Cadence of Water," he calls it—made a deep impression on the Father, and he proceeded to write in his journal this description, which, when it was printed, was the first published account of the cataract: "This wonderful Downfall is compounded of two great Cross-streams of Water, and two Falls, with an Isle sloping along the middle of it. The Waters which fall from this vast height do foam and boil after the most hideous Manner imaginable, making an outrageous Noise, more terrible than that of Thunder; for when the wind blows from off the South, their dismal roaring may be heard above fifteen Leagues off."
The Seneca Indians, who regarded the Niagara River as belonging to themselves, were jealous of the intruders and raised so strong objections to the building of a fort, that La Motte and Hennepin made a journey to their chief town, in the hope of overcoming their opposition. Here they met with a hospitable reception from the savages, who, Hennepin says, "wash'd our Feet, which afterwards they rubb'd over with the Oil of Bears." They found here two faithful Jesuit missionaries—members of an order, by the way, not especially friendly to the one to which Hennepin belonged, the Franciscans—and, at their invitation, the father preached to the Indians.
Next came a council with the elders of the tribe. These made a great impression on Hennepin, who writes, "The Senators of Venice do not appear with a graver countenance, and perhaps don't speak with more Majesty and Solidity than those ancient Iroquese." [1]
With many cunning arguments and specious reasons, the white men stated their case through their interpreter, making much of the point that the new enterprise would open an easiertrade-route, by which goods could be brought and sold to the natives at rates lower than those of the Dutch, with whom these people were in the habit of dealing at Fort Orange (Albany).
The wary old warriors accepted the presents offered them, listened to the speeches, and reserved their decision until the next day, when they plainly showed that they did not put much faith in the assurances of their white brethren. In the end, La Motte and Hennepin went away disappointed. La Salle, however, on his arrival, with his extraordinary skill in dealing with Indians, secured the concessions he needed and went on with his building and the subsequent exploration.
It would be superfluous to repeat the story of the expedition, down to the building of Fort Crèvecoeur. It is not until this point that the journal of Father Hennepin becomes an independent narrative.
From Fort Crèvecoeur La Salle dispatched the father, with two excellent men, Accau and Du Gay, to follow the Illinois River to its mouth and, on reaching the Mississippi, to turn northward and explore its upper waters. Accau, who was an experiencedvoyageur(French fortraveler; a term applied to Canadians who traversed the forests and lakes, bartering with the Indians), was the real head of the expedition. But Hennepin, according to his wont, even when he was in company with so great a genius as La Salle, in his account always gives himself the foremost place.
If Father Hennepin had published no other writings than his account of the journey on the Upper Mississippi, his reputation would be that of a traveler who left a most interesting record of his experiences, embellished with fanciful additions—a not uncommon practice, in those days—but in the main reliable. Unfortunately for his good name, he did something more which justly put such a blot upon his character that many persons refused to believe his story in any of its particulars. We must give a passing notice to this daring performance.
Fourteen years after this expedition, when La Salle was dead, and with the evident purpose of robbing him of his just fame as the first white man who explored the Mississippi all the way to the Gulf, Hennepin for the first time put forth the astonishing statement that he and his two companions, on reaching the Great River, turnedsouth and followed its course all the way to the ocean, after which they ascended it and explored its upper waters—a truly marvelous achievement, if it were true, for three lonely men voyaging on an unknown stream among fierce savages.
Even at the time of its publication, there were those who disallowed this amazing claim. "Why has he so long kept silence about this heroic feat?" they naturally asked. Hennepin had a ready answer: he was afraid of the wrath of La Salle, who would have been furious if any doubt had been cast upon his claim of being the first explorer.
How, then, do we know the story to be false? In several ways. First, and chiefly, because what Hennepin alleged that he had done was simply impossible. In his first book, which was published, let us remember, during La Salle's lifetime, Hennepin said that he left the mouth of the Illinois on March 12, and that he was captured by the Sioux, near the mouth of the Wisconsin, five hundred miles above, on April 11. This looks reasonable, and no doubt it was true. But, in the second story, published fourteen years later, he stated that in that same interval of time he had descended the Mississippito the Gulf, then, returning, had traced its course as far as the mouth of the Wisconsin. One month to accomplish a distance of 3,260 miles! An average of over one hundred miles a day for three men paddling a canoe, up-stream for the greater part of the distance! Surely, we may dismiss the whole story as a colossal falsehood.
But if he did not go below the mouth of the Illinois, how did Hennepin become possessed of the information which he gives in his usual interesting way about the places and peoples all the way down the river to the Gulf? His descriptions have all the appearance of truth. He "cribbed" them. We are able to put our finger on a source from which he drew without stint. It will be remembered that Father Membré accompanied La Salle on his descent of the Mississippi, in 1681. He kept a journal of their experiences. This journal was afterward published by another friar, Le Clerc, but was suppressed by the French government, because it gave offence to the Jesuits. A few copies, however, are in existence to this day. Those who have examined one of these say that Membré's journal is the original of Hennepin's stolen narrative, sometimes whole pages agreeing word for word. Hennepin seemsto have taken it bodily, with a few necessary alterations, such as would make himself, not La Salle, the hero of the expedition. This pirated account, written in Hennepin's picturesque style, met with great success in Europe and was translated into several languages. We are reminded of the sensation which was made by Amerigo Vespucci's fanciful tales of the New World. (See "Pioneer Spaniards in North America," p. 44.)
One more question. If Hennepin lied in saying that he descended the Great River, how do we know that he really ascended it? Because this part of his story is confirmed by an independent witness. The famous trader and leader of fur-traders, Du Lhut, testified that he found Hennepin and his two companions prisoners among the Sioux and rescued them, precisely as we shall find Hennepin relating in his story of the expedition.
We shall, therefore, reject the later-published account of the imaginary journey down the Mississippi and confine our attention to the probably authentic story of his adventures on the upper waters.
Hennepin and his two associates followed the Illinois to its mouth and then turned their canoetoward the head-waters of the Great River. For a time all went well. Game was abundant, and the travelers fared sumptuously on buffalo, deer, turkeys, and fish. Suddenly they encountered a war-party of Sioux in a number of canoes. These fierce rovers, members of the great Dakota family, whose range extended westward a thousand miles from the Mississippi, enjoyed a reputation which caused them to be called "the Iroquois of the West." Immediately they surrounded the Frenchmen with a hideous clamor. Hennepin held up the calumet; but one of them snatched it from him. Then he offered some fine Martinique tobacco, which somewhat mollified them. He also gave them two turkeys which were in the canoe. But, for all this, it was evident that the Sioux were about to treat their prisoners with their wonted ferocity. In fact, one of the warriors signified to the friar in dumb show that he was to be brained with a war-club. On the spot he hastened to the canoe and returned loaded with presents which he threw down before them. This had the effect of so far softening the savage breasts that the prisoners were given food and were allowed to rest in quiet that night.
In quiet, indeed, but not sleeping, we may besure, for can a more trying situation be imagined than that of knowing that one's life or death is under debate, while one has not a chance to say a single word of defence or argument? Some of the Indians, they gathered, favored killing them on the spot and taking their goods. Others contended that when they all wished to attract French traders to come into their country and bring guns, blankets, and other such commodities, it would be unwise to discourage them by killing these prisoners.
Imagine the Frenchmen's joy, when, in the early morning, a young warrior in full paint came to them, asked for the pipe which had previously been rejected, filled and smoked it, and then passed it to his companions to do the same. This pipe was the famous calumet, which we have seen to be so efficacious in the case of Joliet and Marquette. Smoking it was an intimation to the Frenchmen that there was to be peace. They were also informed that they would be taken by the Sioux to their village.
Shortly afterward the friar had a comical experience. When he took out his breviary and began to read his morning devotions in a low tone, the savages gathered around him with looksof terror and frantically signed to him to put away the book. They mistook it for some kind of a fetish, that is, an object inhabited by a powerful spirit, and his muttering they supposed to be a magic incantation. Then a happy thought struck him. He began to sing the service in a loud and cheerful voice. This delighted the savages, who fancied that the book was teaching him to sing for their entertainment.
Now the journey up the river began. On the whole, the Frenchmen fared tolerably well. They took care always to sleep near the young warrior who had been the first to smoke the peace-pipe, and whom they regarded as their protector. The hostile party among the Indians was headed by a wily old fellow who frequently threw the prisoners into a panic by frenzied appeals to the warriors to let him avenge on the white men the death of his son, who had been killed by the Miamis. The Frenchmen invariably met this excitement by fresh gifts. Thus, while they were not openly robbed, they were gradually relieved of their earthly possessions by a sort of primitive blackmail.
Day after day the paddles plied by sinewy arms drove the canoes up the stream. A lakewas passed, which later was called Lake Pepin, in honor of one of a party of their countrymen whom they met a short time afterward.[2] On the nineteenth day after their capture, the prisoners landed, along with their masters, on the spot where St. Paul now stands.
The three Frenchmen's troubles now began in real earnest. First they must see their canoe broken to pieces, to prevent their escape, then the remainder of their goods divided. After this their captors started out for their abodes, which lay to the north, near the lake now called MilleLacs. It was a hard experience for the Frenchmen to tramp with these athletic savages, wading ponds and marshes glazed with ice and swimming ice-cold streams. "Our Legs," says Hennepin, "were all over Blood, being cut by the Ice." Seeing the friar inclined to lag, the Indians took a novel method of quickening his pace. They set fire to the grass behind him and then, taking him by the hands, they ran forward with him. He was nearly spent when, after five days of exhausting travel, they reached the homes of the Sioux.
Entering the village, Hennepin saw a sight that curdled his blood. Stakes, with bundles of straws attached to them seemed in readiness for burning himself and his comrades.
Imagine their amazement when, instead of being roasted, they were taken into a lodge and treated to a kind of whortle-berry puddingà la sauvage!
The next matter of interest was a noisy wrangle among the warriors as to the distribution of the prisoners. To his great terror, Hennepin was assigned to Aquipagetin, the wily old villain who had insisted on the death of the Frenchmen and had persistently blackmailed them. "Surely nowmy time has come," the friar said to himself. Instead, to his great surprise, he was immediately adopted by his new master as a son, to replace the one whom the Miamis had lately killed, a procedure quite in accordance with Indian custom. Hennepin thus found himself separated from his two countrymen, who had other masters, much to the relief of Accau, who heartily hated him.
The friar was now conducted by his adopted father to his lodge, which stood on an island in a lake, was introduced as his son to some six or seven of his wives, was given a platter of fish and a buffalo-robe, and altogether was treated quite as a member of the family.
Now he had a period of rest in the Sioux village. The Indians subjected him, greatly to his advantage, to a treatment such as seems to have been in very general use on this continent and to have been the most rational feature of Indian medical practice, which relied mainly on charms and incantations. It was administered by placing the patient in a tightly closed lodge and pouring water on heated stones, thus producing a dense vapor which induced copious sweating, after which he was vigorously rubbed.
The Sioux had a certain respect for him, onaccount of magic powers which he was supposed to possess, and his pocket-compass inspired them with unbounded awe. On his side, he made himself useful in various ways, such as shaving the children's heads and bleeding the sick. The children had good reason to be thankful for having the friar for their barber, since the native method, he says, was "by burning off the Hair with flat Stones, which they heat red-hot in the Fire."
"Many a melancholy Day," says Hennepin, "did I pass among these Savages." His coarse, filthy food was often of the scantiest, and his work, which he was compelled to do with squaws and slaves—for, of course, no warrior would stoop to labor—was of the hardest. Besides his useful services, one thing that helped greatly to keep him alive was the superstition of his masters. One of his belongings inspired them with wholesome dread. "I had," he says, "an Iron Pot about three foot round, which had the Figure of a Lion on it, which during our Voyage served us to bake our Victuals in. This Pot the Barbarians durst never so much as touch, without covering their Hands first in something of Castor-Skin. And so great a Terror was it to the women,that they durst not come or sleep in the Cabin where it was. They thought that there was a Spirit hid within, that would certainly kill them."
At length the time came for the Indians to go on their annual hunt, and they took Hennepin along. His countrymen were also of the party, and thus he was again thrown with them. The friar gives this indignant account of their outfit: "Our whole Equipage consisted of fifteen or twenty Charges of Powder, a Fusil [gun], a little sorry Earthen Pot, which the Barbarians gave us, a knife between us both, and a Garment of Castor [beaver]. Thus we were equipped for a voyage of 250 Leagues."
The whole band, some two hundred and fifteen in number, descended Rum River, the outlet of Mille Lacs, and encamped opposite its mouth, on the bank of the Mississippi. Food was scarce. The whole camp was on short rations, and the three Frenchmen could get little to eat but unripe berries.
This condition of things was scarcely endurable, and Hennepin was happy in securing permission from the head chief, who always acted in a very friendly manner, to go with his countrymen tothe mouth of the Wisconsin, where he said that he had an appointment to meet some French traders who were coming thither with goods—a piece of pure invention which, however, served its purpose very well. Accau refused to go, preferring the savage life to traveling with the friar. But Du Gay gladly joined him, and the two set off in a small canoe that had been given them. They went swiftly down the river, and soon came to a famous cataract, between the sites of St. Paul and Minneapolis, which Hennepin called the Falls of St. Anthony, in honor of the saint whom he particularly reverenced, St. Anthony of Padua. The name remains to this day and keeps alive the memory of the eccentric friar.[3]
We shall not follow the travelers through their wanderings and adventures. Once, when they had been on very scant fare for several days, they were almost trampled by a herd of buffalo rushing down the bank to cross the river. Du Gay shot a young cow, and they feasted so bountifully that they were taken ill and could not travel for two days. In the meantime the weather was warm, their meat spoiled, and they were soon again nearly famished, depending on catfish and an occasional turtle. Hennepin thus describes one of their encounters: "I shewed Picard [Du Gay] a huge Serpent, as big as a Man's Leg, and seven or eight Foot long. She was working herself insensibly up a steep craggy Rock, to get at the Swallows Nests which are there in great Numbers. We pelted her so long with Stones, till at length she fell into the River. Her Tongue, which was in form of a Lance, was of an extraordinary Length, and her Hiss might be heard a great way."
At last the two Frenchmen joined a band of hunters and among them found our friend Accau.The hunt was very successful. But Hennepin's attention was drawn in another direction by a strange story of five "Spirits," that is to say, Europeans, who were in the neighborhood. A few days later he met them at a little distance below the Falls of St. Anthony.
The leader of the party was one of the most notable men among the early pioneers. His name was Daniel Greysolon Du Lhut, or Du Luth. He was leagued with Count Frontenac and some others in the fur-trade and was equally noted for his success in that line of business, for his coolness and skill in managing Indians and roughcoureurs de bois, and for his achievements as an explorer. He had come to the head of Lake Superior, where a city perpetuates his name, and thence had crossed to one of the tributaries of the Mississippi, when he heard of the three Frenchmen and came to meet them. The encounter was a joyful one on both sides, especially for the prisoners, whose release Du Lhut secured by gifts to the Sioux.
Falls of St. AnthonyFalls of St. Anthony
Falls of St. AnthonyFalls of St. Anthony
The eight Frenchmen now accompanied the Sioux back to Mille Lacs and were treated with great honor. Then they started east and, in due time, reached the Jesuit missions at GreenBay. And here we take leave of Father Hennepin.[4]
[1] Hennepin's language in the passages which have been quoted is given as it appears in an old English translation.
[2] Jonathan Carver, who journeyed up the river in 1766, was the earliest traveler who made mention of ancient monuments in this region. He says that a few miles below Lake Pepin his attention was attracted by an elevation which had the appearance of an intrenchment. He had served in the recent war between Great Britain and France and had an eye to such matters. He says, "Notwithstanding it was now covered with grass, I could plainly discern that it had once been a breast-work of about four feet in height, extending the best part of a mile and sufficiently capacious to cover five thousand men." It was semi-circular in form, and its wings rested on the river, which covered the rear. His surmise that it was built for the purpose of defence is undoubtedly correct. He wonders how such a work could exist in a country inhabited by "untutored Indians" who had no military knowledge beyond drawing a bow. Since his time we have gained far more knowledge of the aborigines, and it is ascertained beyond reasonable question that, at one period, they reared extensive earth-works, probably for the permanent protection of their villages.
[3] Jonathan Carver, who visited the Falls about a hundred years after Hennepin, and from whose works the accompanying illustration is taken, writes thus: "At a little distance below the falls stands a small island, of about an acre and a half, on which grow a great number of oak-trees, every branch of which, able to support the weight, was full of eagles' nests." These birds, he says, resort to this place in so great numbers because of its security, "their retreat being guarded by the Rapids, which the Indians never attempt to pass," and because of the abundant supply of food furnished by fish and animals "dashed to pieces by the falls and driven on the adjacent shore."
About thirty mites below the Falls, he says, he visited a remarkable cave, called by the Indians Wakon-teebe, that is, the Dwelling of the Great Spirit. Within it he found "many Indian hieroglyphicks which appeared very ancient." Near it was a burying-place of the Sioux.
[4] Hennepin relates that at the Falls of St. Anthony two of the men, to the great indignation of Du Lhut when he learned of it, stole two buffalo-robes which were hung on trees as offerings to the Great Spirit. Striking natural objects seem to have been regarded by the Indians as special manifestations of divinity. It is an interesting confirmation, that Jonathan Carver relates that, at the same place, a young warrior who accompanied him threw into the stream his pipe, his tobacco, his bracelets, his neck ornaments, in short, everything of value about him, all the while smiting his breast and crying aloud to the Great Spirit for his blessing.