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 STORIESOF THE GREAT RIVER
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 washard 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 setup 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 byone, 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 handwas 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.
"Beginnow," 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 andconfidence, 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 werewalking, notdancing. 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 winhim 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 thecoureurs de bois, those French fur hunters and traders of the forests, who befriended the society's missionaries.
"We must have patience with untutoredminds," 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 theports 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—thatBirch 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 ofcoureurs de bois. The second canoe received onecoureur 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-cladcoureurs 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.