Marching into Captivity under the War-bonnets, Who Caught Friar Hennepin—A Manitou Becomes a Miller
THE cold nose of a dog nuzzled into Anthony's ear. He woke with a jerk. Peeping from under the brush screen of his camp he saw a file of canoes drifting in the moonlight. He crouched low, pistol in hand, and waited. No wild animal of the wood could have held itself motionless any better than the boy did. His two companions were asleep, weapons ready at their sides. The little dog, trained in a hard school, stood like a pointer.
The canoes came on. Each silhouetted a dozen war-bonnets against the silver river; then it slowly vanished. One by one they went down-stream. Anthony sighed with relief. His path was up-stream. How much better to have the warriors pass in the night than to meet them on the river!
For northern Indians promptly murdered anywhite men whom they found after dark. It was an easy way to win the steel knives which they coveted more than any other one thing. Travelers hid themselves at sunset, avoided prowlers in the gloaming, and tried to visit natives by day in villages known to be peaceful. The arms carried by a small trading party were of little use against a band of warriors.
Anthony lay down to rest again. He praised and petted the dog, who was proud to stay on guard. But he could not go to sleep. There might be more Indians, painted for battle, coming after these.
He was not as eager as usual for the voyage forward. Yet the backward route was impossible. Behind him lay his base of supplies, Fort Crevecœur, that unhappy post whose very name meant heartbreak. Its safety depended somewhat on the results of this journey of his, and he could not see much luck ahead if the river was going to be peopled with fighting-men of savage tribes.
Anthony was not equipped for war; only for defense. Besides the pistol he had a sword. It had been given him by the Sieur Joliet.
For his successful explorations the French government had rewarded the Sieur Joliet with the island of Anticosti, where he had established a manor and given the boy a home. From there Anthony had brought the sword and the pistoland his ever-recurring wanderlust to an expedition which Robert Cavelier, called the Sieur La Salle, was fitting out to develop the Mississippi Basin.
Under a patent from the king several forts for trade and for defense had already been built. This one of Crevecœur was the Sieur La Salle's farthest outpost. It was the one French settlement to hold their claim in the Mississippi Valley.
They had built it without trouble from the gentle Illinois Indians, but the reckless adventurers who made up the troops which defended it became so unruly when they were shut up in the little stockade during the winter that a mutiny seemed always at hand.
No one knew when he laid his head on his pillow at night whether he would still be wearing it in the morning.
So far, the strong hand of the commander had kept the soldiers within bounds, but even he thought it wise to send out scouts as early as possible to the western waters who might bring back news of fresh discoveries, of more lands, perhaps gold-fields, to conquer. Then the troops would forget their quarrels and advance together under discipline in the hope of treasure trove.
A second group of traders promised to follow this first one to keep a line for traffic and messages open. Where Anthony went others could go. He was the scout.
A man named Accau was put in charge of ten thousand livres' worth of goods in beads and knives and trinkets, for trading with any Indians they might meet. A Franciscan friar, Louis Hennepin, was sent as a missionary to the natives.
"Anybody but us would be afraid to undertake such a journey," he had bragged, quite frankly.
"Perhaps you are, anyway," Accau had commented. "Iam."
Anthony was glum and talked little. And the fourth member of this exploring party, a King Charles spaniel, Accau's pet, said nothing at all. A faithful sentinel he stood watch at night, fulfilled his round of duties, and found no fault with anything. King Charles was truly royal; it was a joy to belong to his court.
Their canoe had dropped down the Illinois and then turned north on the Great River.
They had fended off huge floating cakes of ice in the current; they had fought hungry bears on the bank; they had struggled with cold all the time and everywhere.
And now as he lay and watched with King Charles, on the lookout for more Indians on the river, Anthony had one of those blue moods which told him that he would probably havetrouble with savages on top of his other woes. For they had passed the mouth of the Wisconsin and were in country new to them. Glimpses of red men came oftener and oftener.
They continually looked for overhanging trees on the shore-line, and when they heard or saw savages coming they hid under the branches until the strangers had gone again.
But now in mid-April—it was the year of 1680—they found themselves in such a narrow and crooked channel that Accau became alarmed. "Go ashore," he commanded Anthony. "Peep around each bend and signal us to follow with the canoe if the way is safe."
The friar picked up his beads for a fervent prayer to his patron, Saint Anthony of Padua.
Alas and alack! All their caution came too late.
Without a sound of blade in the water, without a tone of human voice, a dozen or so of birch-bark craft swept round the point and swooped down upon them!
There were three or four war-bonnets in each canoe. It was a pursuing party such as Anthony had dreaded.
At the sight of quarry the savages broke the silence. They split the air with war-whoops. They surrounded the explorers' canoe; grabbed it; hustled it ashore. Big game!
The Frenchmen were confused with thetopsy-turvy handling, the flutter of feathers, and the deafening howls.
They tried to show a bold front. Père Louis said, "They cannot terrify me," and he coolly picked out the ugliest chief, a furrowed old sinner named Aquipaguetin, and presented the calumet. That worthy snatched it from the friar and left him at the mercy of the fierce young braves.
These youths were eager to destroy the Frenchmen. Dozens of stone knives and war-clubs were ready.
It was not mercy which stayed them. It was indecision.
How was any warrior to scalp such curious heads?
Above an odd white face unlike anything these savages had ever seen the Père Louis, neatly tonsured, had no hair in the place where hair ought to be. Accau sported a great beard. Whiskers were unknown among Indians.
King Charles, gazing from his hiding-place in his master's jerkin, showed a second hairy face. The savages were dazed at this double vision. They stared at Accau. They could not make up or down of him. Spring winds had burnt Anthony's blond skin to a fiery hue. His fair curls were tousled. Such a countenance in such a halo was too much for them. Light hair was something entirely new. Curls were ornamentsundreamed of. Although he bore hair enough for a dozen scalps they had no method for collecting it.
As they hesitated, a younger and wiser chief, Narrhetoba, commanded the observance of the calumet. There was a flurry of objections, but they obeyed. The bloodthirsty eyes were turned from the baffling scalps to the presents which the explorers were trying to show.
Anthony addressed them in one Algonquin dialect after another. Accau tried them in Iroquois and Huron. The friar thundered at them in Latin, French, Portuguese, and Dutch. All words were alike to them.
A howl went up. "Mi-am-hi! Mi-am-hi! Mi-am-hi!"
Anthony picked up a stick. "I'll draw a map on the sand and show them that I saw those Indians pass in the night far below here; the whole tribe is now scudding westward over the prairies out of reach."
The map was drawn. Its meaning was plain; its news was unwelcome.
A clamor of rage followed. The old men wept aloud.
Aquipaguetin in particular lamented loudly.
The white men guessed that this chief had lost a son in battle with the Miamis and that he was leading the Sioux in hope of revenge. So disappointed was he at the turn of events thathe shed grimy tears all over Père Louis' shaven crown.
"This old fellow carries his son's bones with him to keep his wrath in mind," the friar explained as well as he could above the hubbub. "If he can't get even with the Miamis he will take out his anger on the next people at hand—Frenchmen."
All the other chiefs began to wail.
"I think that we, too, are the same as dead," murmured Accau. "They mourn as they would over the slain," and his whiskers quivered with dread of torture and the stake. In hope of diverting the Indians he began to hand out presents to Anthony, who tossed them with much show to the friar, who in turn threw them among the chiefs, who groveled to them like Circe's swine. Half a dozen axes and twice that number of knives made a fine exhibit.
With the quick rolling eyes of men in deadly peril, the Frenchmen noticed that the Indians, in spite of gay paint and big feathers, were poorly set up. Their skin clothes were old, ragged, meager; their bodies more than half naked in the chill weather. Their jewelry was of shells, their embroideries of quills. Not one bit of iron showed, nor did they have beads.
How like glittering wealth the bright cutting edges of the traders' knives must look to them! By simple pantomime the friar told thesesavages that many more white men with much more steel were coming to give presents to those who were friendly and to kill those who were not. Then he bent his neck with humility, bared it, and offering Narrhetoba one of the sharp axes, cried, "Dare you to cut off a white man's head?"
At that a hush fell on the group. Across the spring sunshine falling through the leaves came a sparrow's song. One long moment passed in hesitation.
Aquipaguetin longed to try a knife in just such use. But Narrhetoba, who held the ax, was of another generation. He had a commercial spirit. He saw a long line of white traders from whom he might gain more in barter than he could from these three by violence. He withheld his hand. By so doing he then and there split the warrior band into two sections—those whose motives were like Aquipaguetin's, robbery through murder; and those who, like Narrhetoba, preferred the safer and greater gain by exploitation.
Father Louis bellowed at them in his biggest pulpit voice. The still aisles of the forest began to resound with his words: "I am resolved to allow myself to be killed without resistance. Behold the example I set you! I come to convert the heathen."
Not one word could his listeners understand.But Narrhetoba nodded his approval of this speech. He liked the spirit of the friar.
Accau began to take on hope for his skin and his goods. Anthony, who had been sweating in cold drops, shook himself warm again and unscrewed his drawn brows. "Perhaps I can placate Aquipaguetin, who is cross at missing his kill." And the boy raised his pistol. In the gaping sight of all he fired into a flock of wild turkeys which was whirling heavily across the open shore space near where the council stood. Two fell from the single shot.
The savages fell upon the game like roaches on a crumb. The feathered victims were pulled and torn apart. Indians who had never seen a gun examined the wonder of that shot. The birds' bones were broken as no arrow could do it. How desirable one of those iron "lightning sticks" would be for crippling an enemy!
Aquipaguetin seemed to be telling them that one gun in the hand was worth any number in the dim future. The braves at Narrhetoba's side snapped back that two guns would not go round. Wait for traders!
Narrhetoba, not looking quite as good a friend as his gestures said he was, soon brought their calumet back to them, made each take a puff, had one himself, and then gave it as a bitter pill to the defeated Aquipaguetin. "Peace among us," was what the smoking meant.
Immediately the canoes were shoved into the water. The explorers were jostled into them as rudely as they had been taken out. Prows were turned up-stream. Anthony took heart. As long as they moved in the direction his duty demanded he could make observations.
Father Louis stood up in the canoe as though he were pronouncing a benediction on those congregated round him and he gravely intoned these words, "I am not sorry to continue the business of making our discoveries in connection with these native inhabitants."
For nineteen of the long, long days of April they were hurried up the river at a furious pace. Peep o' day routed them from their slumbers on the ground. They were given a hasty bit of food and pushed into the canoes. Sometimes they stopped for dinner, sometimes not. Ceaselessly until dusk the paddling continued.
Four miles an hour up-stream! It was a frightful speed! All records for that generation were broken by the muscular Sioux. Ten hours a day! For twice ten days! Anthony grew stupid from the excessive toil. The friar was so jumbled in his note-taking that neither he nor his friends were able to understand some of his words. Poor Accau was worn out with the rough going. "I am always being waked up, yet I never have a chance to go to sleep," he grumbled.
The white men sank exhausted whenever they stopped on shore. But the young Indians, scrawny, sorry-looking specimens whose bodies seemed as despicable as their minds, danced vigorously around the camp-fire half the night singing the same verse of the same song over and over again. The old Indians sat up and applauded by continuous yells until the fires burnt out. Then they stood watch, turn about, until dawn. At sun-up they were wide awake and well started on another day.
Each night Aquipaguetin began a weeping harangue in favor of killing the Frenchmen, only to be out-talked and defrauded of his prey.
Thus through bad days and worse nights the upper Mississippi was first navigated. These three Frenchmen in constant jeopardy discovered and described it. No wonder they named a beautiful body of water they found Lake Pepin (lake of tears) in honor of that sobbing old rascal Aquipaguetin.
Suddenly one day they were set ashore, their canoe smashed, their goods divided among the savage crew, and they themselves herded for a cross-country run.
All that fatigue of rowing upon their arms was as nothing compared with the strain now put upon the white men's legs. Up hill—down dale—over streams—through woods—running—climbing—swimming—they scurried at their best, driven by the tireless savages, who lighted the prairie grass at their heels for the fun of seeing them sprint. Lucky for them that their feet were shod with pluck!
Pell-mell into a native village they came at last. Howling squaws, squealing papooses, yapping dogs burst into chorus to greet them. They saw huts suggesting shelter, steaming pots suggesting food, and a row of tall stakes tied about with dried grass and piled with faggots—suggesting what?
The friar wondered how his name would look written among the martyrs. Accau's eyes followed the goods with which he had been trusted; he would need them no more. Anthony, viewing these preparations for the reception of any prisoners the war party brought, felt as hollow as a drum. "The frying-pan of captivity is better than the fire of those stakes," he thought.
The more frightened a Frenchman is the quicker his wits work, the more his gestures multiply, and the higher his courage rises. The boy stooped and picked up a bunch of feathers blowing near his feet. If he had not seen the feathers he would have taken something else, so short was the time for action and so dire the need.
Into the center of the circle made by the littlered blotches of the supper fires he stepped pompously. He thus came into full view of the big chief, Ouasicoude, of all the Sioux. Separating one lock from his curls he thrust a feather half-way into the coil. Apparently intent upon this odd toilet he arranged curl after curl, until the whole tribe, as curious as crows, were giving him their full attention.
Then he turned his irresistible smile toward Ouasicoude and gaily burst into laughter. Still laughing, he began to dance. He changed from laughing into singing—not the slow, mournful, coarse, and angular amusement of the Sioux, but a lively, tuneful jig of Picardy lads.
He was several years older than when he had sung to please the Père Marquette. His voice had settled to a golden barytone. It fell agreeably upon the ears of the most high executioner and he was seized with an idea which at some time or other has awakened in the breast of every king, "Why not have a minstrel at my court?" or, as Ouasicoude put it, "Why not keep loud medicine in my own tepee?"
That Anthony and his companions should live or die, that the trio should be saved to give their discoveries to the world, was nothing to him; that his royal self should be amused was everything.
From the pebble-filled gourd which Aquipaguetin had thrust as a rattle on each of thedoomed men, the boy shook out a mocking tune as he danced nearer and nearer to the stakes. At close range he drew his pistol and shot into the dried grass on one of them. As will often happen from such a charge the burning powder set the stuff on fire. It blazed up. Before the astounded savages it consumed itself. This was medicine tremendous! All forgot the original use of the stakes. They wanted this new style of bonfire, and Anthony set them off amid loud applause.
Ouasicoude loudly announced his intention to adopt the singer as his son. Narrhetoba, clever courtier, with an admiring glance at King Charles, immediately followed suit by taking Accau and the dog. Glinting maliciously, Aquipaguetin proclaimed himself the father of the friar, introducing the Franciscan to five squat squaws who were his new mothers because they were this chieftain's wives.
In a twinkling the three explorers became members of the nation. Ouasicoude and Anthony, Narrhetoba and Accau, Aquipaguetin and the Friar Louis are the six Sioux who made this region famous in its early days.
Now, the Sioux had a manitou. Greater than all other manitous it demanded much worship. To this deity, then, the Sioux fathers must present their adopted sons as an act of grace. When the Frenchmen were separated from the otherIndians and secretly led to the holy place they were prepared for some solemn form of initiation into the tribe.
The home of the manitou burst in wonder on their eyes. It was a splendid fall of laughing water. In the midst of primeval grandeur the cascade dropped in a peerless sheet of spray forty feet over a limestone ledge. No more beautiful spot for the residence of any manitou could be imagined. He was hidden behind this flashing torrent. He loved sacrifices. To please him the Sioux of all tribes threw many gifts into a deep basin made by a hollow in the rock.
Anthony was weary of captivity. So tiresome and degrading had his days among these savages become that he almost wished he could be lulled to sleep by the voice of the cataract, never to wake again.
But as the boy watched old Aquipaguetin grow more and more fervid in his devotions and saw him twitch his stone club with eager fingers and roll his eyes round and round in search of some living thing which would make a worthy sacrifice, life suddenly seemed very precious to Anthony. He determined that he should not become food for any manitou, no matter how great.
Aquipaguetin's ardor was spreading to the others. They caught his idea. What noblergifts had ever been given to the deity than these adopted sons would make?
Anthony's first thought for defense was, "I must change my father's point of view." The only remedy he knew for any savages' dangerous notion was to turn their minds to something more startling.
The friar kept a wary front toward his parent-foe; Accau edged close to Anthony; King Charles scented peril and, putting his tail between his legs, sneaked under the waterfall. The hint was unmistakable. Acting upon it, the boy, for his skin's sake, resolved to outwit superstition with superstition.
As Aquipaguetin came toward him with swinging club, the boy pulled his companions within the sacred arc of rainbow spray where no Indian dared follow lest the manitou become enraged.
Anthony then hunched himself into the fanatical pose of an inspired medicine-man. Because he was a capital mimic, as most singers are, his words rang out in the same raving tones their own magician might have used.
Ouasicoude and Narrhetoba paused thunderstruck. They thought the manitou had thrown his mantle of sorcery over these aliens. They fell on their faces and did obeisance to the waterfall. Aquipaguetin was not so sure of the divine nature of Anthony's deed, but he wasawed in spite of himself and lowered his club and bent his back, shedding tears of disappointment.
Who would profane a temple or destroy a shrine?
Certainly not Anthony, who had fled to it for sanctuary. The loveliness of the manitou's cascade and the power of its fall were as plain to him as to the savages. Why, then, should not the deity inspire him to prophecy as though he were a votary?
He had sacrificed himself to make the discovery of such useful natural features of the Great River as this waterfall might prove to be. Let it now reward him with a new lease on life that he might give his find to the Empire.
He thought of the brook in Picardy and of the wheels it set to going and he cried in ecstasy to this current of so much greater size:
"Some day, O laughing Water, white men shall put a harness upon you and drive you to work at turning a mill." His fancy set big factories up and down the shore. Yet his dream-workshops were not as huge as the immense roller-mills which now stand in substantial piles, row upon row, where once his imagination builded.
"Over these fertile lands of your sky-blue lakes shall spring up the white man's wheat." It was easy for him to think of the Mississippishores dotted with farms; the valley conquered by the plow. But he could never have believed it if any one had told him of fields of a thousand acres each, of traction plows, of gasolene reapers, and of steam threshers; the inventions and triumphs of the agricultural Northwest.
"To you, O Miller-manitou, shall all the valleys bring their harvests as food to your grindstones." He imagined a line of French donkeys between panniers carrying wheat to the grinders. Whatwouldhe have thought of a caterpillar truck and its trailers?
"Apprentices of genius shall teach you how to improve your hoppers and your stones." The Frenchman La Croix, an employee in the early mills along this site, proved to be, of all the clever workmen, the one who invented most of the superior processes which make these mills, where he studied, the models of the industrial world.
"Settlers shall crowd to your feet and towns rise around you."
He was thinking of the hamlets of Picardy or perhaps of something like the metropolis of Amiens. Of such a capital as St. Paul or a city like Minneapolis he had no idea.
"Old World gold shall be poured into your sacrificial basin."
One page of statistics showing the annualincome of the modern mills would have read to him, as it does to many others, like a page from the log of a Spanish treasure ship. Anthony exaggerated the power of the falls and the prosperity of the country to the limit of his imagination. That they would finally both be greater than his prophesy no sane man of his time would have dared to say.
His oration was having a fine effect upon the listening Indians. He could see that from the corner of his eye. He was sure they would not dare to harm him now. Although they might not understand his words, the all-knowing manitou could, of course, and that was enough for them. As he stepped out to join them his last words, impossible as they seemed, were of practical business worth and part of them are still official:
"Then, O idle manitou, when you are worn down and flattened by the toil of serving the race which tamed you, men shall forget your youthful beauty and your sacred title, a prosaic commercial nation shall know you only by that name with which I now take possession of you in the name of France—all persons here present as consenting witnesses. You, as a busy miller, shall be called for me and for my patron saint the Falls of St. Anthony!"
Whether the explorers had done a good day's work in discovering the wheat lands and thewater to develop them, let the farmers and the millers and the cities of Minnesota say.
Any one who noticed the gaily feathered foster-fathers and their equally decorated sons as they trotted homeward toward the tepees, outlined in every detail of feature and costume against the red northern sunset, single file, toeing in, stone clubs dangling, could be certain that a feast was in preparation and that he saw six satisfied Sioux.