Carrying a Peace Pipe among Savages for the Commandant, Louis Joliet—Lost in the Rapids
THE rushes at the shore-line were broken and bent. Anthony, on watch, glanced across the prow of his canoe and saw on the low ground the prints of human feet! Marks of bare toes in the mud!
No need to signal, "Look out!" His electrical pause had run like wireless through both canoes. All fingers pointed to the same spot.
"Men! Savage men!"
Now this thing happened many, many years before the days of Robinson Crusoe. That man Friday with the large historic feet was not yet born. This surprise was all the Frenchmen's own.
After coming for hundreds of miles in primeval loneliness and spending weeks without seeing a human face, these tracks filled the explorers with curiosity and with caution. They notedthe traces with swift decision. All wanted to land and investigate.
"I must speak my message to every nation," said the priest, picking up his tiny altar.
"There is a path, well beaten, leading inland," the Sieur Joliet pointed out as he loaded himself with trinkets. "We two will go ahead and make friends. Stay offshore on guard, you others, until we send for you," and both leaders disappeared through the long grass of the rolling meadow.
After what seemed a wait of many hours, the impatient watchers saw upon the path the figure of an Indian youth running toward them. He stopped suddenly with hand outstretched when he neared the water's edge.
The interpreter gave him greeting in Algonquin, that common tongue of midwestern natives, "How welcome are the feet of the messenger who comes in friendship!"
The answer was in a boyish treble, a trifle breathless, in the language of the Illinois, a form of the Algonquin. The sentences were clear and so slowly spoken that in spite of their astonishment at the age of the runner they understood him. "How beautiful, O Frenchmen, is the sun when thou cometh to visit us! Our town awaits thee! Thou shalt enter our cabins in peace!" Having made the speech taught him, he held out a piece of white paper as a token of good faith.
So the explorers paddled in and gazed at the youth with interest. He was not as tall as Anthony, nor so heavy. He was straighter and more supple than any white boy could ever be. His head, tufted with a chieftain's scalp-lock, was set arrogantly on his slim round neck. No traveler, however observing, could have described his clothes. He hadn't any!
His hair and eyes were black; his teeth were very white by contrast; his features were straight and delicate.
On his left wrist, which he placed against his heart to conceal, with Indian instinct, even so natural a function as its rapid beating from his hurrying, he held an iridescent passenger-pigeon.
A piece of paper in an Indian country was a guarantee of a white man's summons. They followed it with confidence. Anthony began immediately, "My name's Tony. What is yours?"
The little Indian threw back his head in the haughtiest of gestures, "He who speaks is a slave. He is called the Wingèd One, a son of the greatest sachem of the Southwest tribes. By his captors—lean dogs of Illinois—he has been given to the Black-gowned One and to the white man with beads who is master of the Black-gown."
To Anthony's puzzled look the interpreter replied: "Some Indian tribes sell or give as presents the captives they take in conquest. They have traded him to Sieur Joliet for beads."
So swiftly had the Wingèd One come to them that they had gone some distance on the path before they began to meet the groups of savages who had plainly started from the village when he did and had been outdistanced. They were strung out all over the prairie according to the speed they had been able to make trying to keep up with the Wingèd One. They, too, were dressed in a costume of Mother Nature's designing, the close-fitting garment of their own skins.
"Don't be afraid," said the half-breed, "all they want is to look at us." And sure enough, the stragglers passed quietly, devouring with their eyes these so queer folks from the other side of the world.
Vivid with interest, Anthony laid a friendly hand on the Wingèd One and showed his delightfully crooked teeth in a grin of comradeship. The savage returned it with a cool stare, but the color spreading in a deep blush, wave upon wave, from brow to toes, under his bronze skin, showed that the compliment had gone home to his lonely little slave heart. His agitation made the pigeon flutter at his side.
At this response, Anthony threw back his head and laughed aloud. Indians have a sense of humor, but they do not yield to laughter as this French boy did. The merry sound drew thelittle slave to him and the two strays, one from Picardy, one from the desert, went together to join the trader and the priest.
Hundreds of Indians, inhabitants of three villages, had come to see the white men. They were gathered in the open space in front of the sachem's bark tent. An envoy made a speech of greeting:
"We thank thee for taking so much pains to come and visit us. Never has the earth seemed so lovely nor the sun so bright as to-day. Never has the Great River been so calm nor so free from rocks. Your magic canoes have removed all obstacles as they came. Never has our tobacco tasted so fine nor our corn looked so thriving. Come and dwell with us that we may know your Manitou!"
To honor the guests a busy preparation for a grand feast was going forward in the center of the town. There was to be smoking of the peace pipes. Most splendid of all, a dance of the calumet was soon to begin.
Warriors strutted in the front rows of the crowd. Squaws slipped to the back. Men and women singers gathered under a tree. Little red cubs of babies scuttled in and out. Dogs got under everybody's feet. The sun was going down and firelight and twilight mingled with the shadows.
On a mat of woven rushes lay the all-powerfulcalumet. It was a pipe with a red-stone bowl for tobacco and a long hollow stem of two feet or more. Feathers of the white eagle decorated it. Red feathers would have meant a calumet of war—and destruction to the guests!
This calumet was to be given as the greatest of all compliments to the bead-bringing visitors. It was a passport, a letter of credit, and a talisman to any group of strange Indians.
When the music for the dance began all the Indians sang the same air, but they sang in octaves. The soprano of the women and boys, the barytone of some men, the bass of others, produced a chorus full and rich. Drums, many high, a few low in tone, supplied the place of harmonized chords which Indian composers cannot manage. To this accompaniment, weird and incomplete, but agreeable to Anthony's ear, the dancers stepped in perfect time and graceful swaying as they kept to the long-drawn-out, bewildering, and sweetly monotonous round upon round.
As the shining copper-red bodies of the dancers gyrated, their shadows leaped and fell. When the firelight flickered, the eyes of the watching hundreds squatting in the background glowed green like fox-fire.
In the pauses of the music speeches were made and more presents given, first by the sachems and then by the Frenchmen.
The French had so strong a passion for courtesy as to carry their good manners even into the wigwams of savages. In return the natives were glad to honor such guests with barbaric splendor. Perhaps of all the strange things that have happened on the Great River none is stranger than the fact that white men of a later day should have forgotten the politeness with which the clever Illinois nations first received their race and should have rudely and greedily turned such powerful allies into revengeful foes.
As they went on down the river the priest handled the calumet gingerly and carried it in a prominent place. "Odd!" he said, "that a toy of feathers should be the god of peace and war! In a wilderness where brute force and cunning seem to hold sway that the power of an idea—a fanciful amulet—should be the arbiter of life and death! That scientific explorers should pin their hopes to an eagle's plume!"
As they went from one village to another some natives showed them hospitality, some indifference, some hatred, but all were obedient to the white calumet's demand for peace. "Men do not give to the crowns and scepters of kings the honor Indians pay to the calumet."
Very often at sunrise Anthony could prophesy to the little slave: "To-day we will come to a wattled hamlet. The Sieur Joliet will giveknives and trinkets to the sachems. The Père Marquette will preach. Each Indian will touch my curls to feel if they are real and ask what kind of a stone I use to file my teeth nice and crooked so the songs will come through." At sunset he could add, "I told you so!"
But when on a quiet morning at 33° latitude the little slave foretold, "The Wingèd One to-day will meet many enemies," Anthony did not believe him, for none of the white men could see signs of Indians.
"In yonder elm a sentinel sits."
The explorers glanced sharply about; nothing showed among the leaves.
"Above the whitewood a smoke signal rises."
Only summer drifts of cloud met their gaze.
"Red men stalk the white."
It was unbelievable; the level shore spaces were empty.
"Ambushed!" cried the child. "Hold up the calumet!"
Wooden pirogues loaded with armed savages swung across the Mississippi in front of them. A startled backward turn showed them another barrage of the same sort cutting off retreat upriver. On both shores painted and feathered men sprang up by dozens to howl like fiends. They leaped into the water to catch the canoes. A kindly eddy swirled the birch barks out of reach. Whoops of rage burst from the warriors.A shower of arrows chased the explorers. Tomahawks whizzed close.
They ducked; ducked promptly.
Not so the little slave. He stood erect and let a tomahawk snip off half his cherished topknot without flinching.
An Indian child baiting warriors caught the attention of the old braves. They scanned him so closely that they saw the calumet at which he pointed. They hastened to throw down their bows and arrows in token of submission to the peace pipe. Magic calumet!
Anthony did not enjoy the visit which followed nor the meetings with other inhabitants of this group of villages. He had a constant desire to look behind him. There was often a queer weakness in his knees. He wanted to keep his curly scalp close to the white eagle feathers. The temper of these observers of the calumet's command was not all he wished it might be.
Yet when one of the Akamsea sachems stood up in formal pow-wow his words were fair. And he was agreeable to look upon. He was tall. He was straight. He shone like a copper candlestick. He had on his best clothes—that is, there was a blue quill in his nose and a red one over his left ear. For the rest he wore a blank expression and he carried his own white calumet.
He told them, "Only once has a white man seen our Great River," then added, with coldsignificance, "He lies buried here under the water."
He meant the Spaniard, Hernandez De Soto, who had come across the country from the southeast more than a century before, and who had died in 1541 on the banks of the Mississippi, which he was undoubtedly the first to find.
"A few days' paddling to the south will bring your canoes to the mouth of this Father of Waters; for it flows into the southern Gulf," the sachem said.
Where the Messipi went was one of the chief things the French wanted the Sieur Joliet to learn. This speech of the sachem was telling him exactly what he wished to know.
"Savage Indians, in league with white men who do not observe the calumet, infest the waters of the Gulf," was the sachem's next sinister hint.
If the Frenchmen and their maps fell into the hands of their rivals, Spain could claim and take immense territory just explored by the agents of France. How might seven men in birch bark hold out against the cutlasses and "six-pounders" of a galleon?
To keep what one has gained is better than to lose all in trying to win more. The Sieur Joliet gave one glance at the low-hanging pole-star, one word of command to his followers, and before his doubtful hosts could form a plan for oragainst him the explorers were paddling with all speed up the Mississippi beyond the chance of pursuit.
The Wingèd One fed his pigeon chinkapin, which he called chechinquamin, with royal unconcern, but Anthony did his work nervously. "I am always kind toourslave," he thought, as he watched the little Indian with pity, "but I cannot be sure how the Spaniards will treatmeif they catch us."
Slavery in various forms has been part of the Great River's life. After the news of its discovery had spread and vessels from many lands dragged their anchors at its mouth, captives red, white, brown, yellow, and black were traded to anybody and everybody for kegs of rum, or hogsheads of molasses, or bundles of tobacco.
Among the pioneers who later came to settle the prairies and woodlands of its fertile shores were numerous bound children, indentured servants and redemptioners. Then ship-load upon ship-load of stolen African negroes were brought to the fields of the South when the invention of the cotton-gin made their labor profitable. For nearly two hundred years the river washed away the tears of hapless bondsmen.
To escape any native pursuers whom his enemies might send after him the Sieur Joliet led his men up the Illinois River to the Chakakou, which the glaciers had twisted to run into LakeMichigan, but which daring modern engineers have turned back again as it was in the very beginning, so that nowadays the system of the Great Lakes is partly drained into the Great River by the sameChicago, a geographical condition which was not true when Anthony helped to draw it on the maps.
Père Marquette went on to his Indians at Mackinaw. Sieur Joliet took Anthony and the little slave and onecoureur de boisand kept on down toward Quebec to report. When at last they came near Montreal, full of the triumph of their great discovery, they had paddled, since the beginning of their venture, something like three thousand miles. It was two years since the leader had left this fort for the West.
It was an autumn morning. Brilliantly colored forests lined the shores, and between two big rocks, like a cathedral door, the rapids ahead sparkled in a vista of incomparable loveliness. Over them flights of migrating pigeons winged their way. The pet on the little slave's wrist cooed an instinctive answer to their call, rose in a flash of silver and soared into their midst.
With a cry of sorrow as though he were losing his dearest friend, the small chieftain sprang to his feet and threw up his hands as if to catch it as it flew. Too late to check this impetuous movement, the other three crouched low and swung their bodies in a frenzied attempt to preserve the balance of the canoe. Useless! It capsized on the instant.
THE MEN WENT HEADLONG INTO THE RAPIDSTHE MEN WENT HEADLONG INTO THE RAPIDS
THE MEN WENT HEADLONG INTO THE RAPIDS
The men went headlong into the rapids. The canoe smashed against a rock.
All the heavy goods dropped to the bottom of the channel. Lighter stuff floated on the current a moment and then sank. Priceless notes and maps and drawings burst their waterproof coverings on a sharp projection, were scattered on a hundred waves, soaked with spray, hurled away, and utterly destroyed.
Anthony plunged to the bottom. Treading water he tore off his jerkin and came to the surface. He caught at an exposed stone. It was rough enough for a fingerhold and he might have saved himself had he not seen, sweeping past him, his Indian brother, the Wingèd One. Crushed by some cruel rock, lifeless, beyond all human help, the stripling royal, a slave no longer, drifted out into the happy hunting-grounds of all his race.
Strong arms grasped Anthony—pulled him up to blessed air. He was kept afloat and dragged free of the rapids. With the Sieur Joliet's fingers in his hair to help, he began to swim again. They gained the bank and clambered to safety.
But thecoureur de bois—that laughing, hairy faun—had perished with the Indian.
In bitterness and despair the boy fell upon the sod and abandoned himself to grief.
The Sieur Joliet stood white and cold, like a ghost from whom all hope has fled.
Oh, the cruelty of fate! To carry them harmless through half a hundred rapids, only to shipwreck them in sight of home!
A long, hard voyage had come to naught; the proof of his greatest discovery was lost.
"I have nothing left but my life," he groaned.
Bruised and battered, soaking wet and in rags, they trudged on through a forest path. Sometimes they sank in utter weariness; oftener they supported each other with renewed courage. And so at last the fort came in sight and opened its comforting home-like gates to them.
Here the sorrowful Anthony saw the explorer give his empty hands to the commandant. It seemed to the boy that all the glory of their expedition had gone out in tragedy like the poor little slave who was lost in the rapids.
Imagine his astonishment when he received the command, "Bring me, Tony, a pot of ink and some quills."
The obedient Anthony, standing as assistant, with his gray eyes growing wider and wider with admiration, saw the Sieur Joliet set the quills to parchment. Under his skilful fingers there grew a picture of the course of the Great River as he recollected it. He drew its twists and turns,its distances and latitudes, put down the location and the names of the villages where he had received the calumet.
It was a curious document of amazing accuracy. From it grew the further history of the Mississippi. Whenever an adventurer wanted to go a-wandering he studied this map. To Western explorers it became their book of A B C.