A Chase of the Buffalo Herds in the Prairie Tribes of Michael Accau—Flight of the Fur Traders
ONE little, two little, three little Indians, four little, five little, six little Indians, seven little, eight little, nine little Indians, ten little Indian boys sat in a bark tepee and yapped in chorus with King Charles as Father Louis, holding up his friar's gown, exercised his sandaled feet and bare shanks at a brisk pace up and down in front of them.
As he paused for breath, "Taketchiabihen?" he demanded, "Taketchiabihen?"
The little Indians and the dog shrilled again with the same crass sounds. Rubbing his ears when he had had enough of this word, the friar pulled out his note-book and jotted down some letters.
Anthony had chanced to see this performance as he came to the door flap. His eyebrows and dimples, his curls and teeth were a whole pageof question marks and exclamation points. Père Louis answered him as though he had spoken: "I am making a dictionary of the Sioux language. This is the word forrun," and he showed the unspellable and unpronounceable yelp with which the children had answered his hiccoughing, "What is this?"
As the friar mopped his forehead Anthony's brows came down and his smile widened. "How did you manage to get them to help you?" he inquired.
Father Louis sighed as he explained: "When the mothers saw me use my razor they decided that the steel edge would shave the heads of the boys better than the sharp hot stones they had always used for that purpose. I am not allowed my dinner until I tonsure these fledgling braves all around their scalp-locks. In my turn I will not shave them until they tell me some new words. By reciprocity, then, does the dictionary grow. Some day I may be able to converse in the language of the Sioux. I can already understand something of what will be said to me by the gentleman yonder." He indicated a warped red thief who had put a pair of wretched legs through the armholes of the friar's elegant chasuble and was wearing it upside down. It was fastened comfortably in this position by a pair of suspenders made of the Franciscan cord.
Anthony was scandalized. But Father Louis had become resigned to slight mishaps like stolen clothes; too many worse things had happened in the three months of his captivity.
He led Anthony to another irregular hut, where the boy was placed side by side with the over-dressed person in the semi-religious style of suit. The friar was needed to baptize a sick papoose. The Père Louis' tolerance and sense of duty so affected Anthony that his awkward arms were very gentle. He was filled with pity and quite forgot the grotesque figure beside him in helping the tiny dying creature under his hands. He could not find it in his heart to object when the grateful friar named the child Antoinette in honor of her pale-face godfather.
Father Louis went promptly to the next business in hand, "Do you, Anthony, please keep the children out of mischief for a minute while I pack," he said. Anthony, half crying in sorrow for the expiring child and half laughing in disgust at the living ones, got his pocket compass. The magnetic needle was the one thing that scared the little Indians into decent behavior. Their fathers had told them it was a magic spirit which guided the white men over lands where no trails led. All the Sioux, large and small, quaked before its quivering point.
By its threat the meddlesome hands were warned away from the friar's sleeves whosepocket cuffs were the only trunks he carried. He was going with Anthony to join a concourse of the Sioux hunters setting out in pursuit of buffalo.
News that the migrating herds were coming their way had set the Indians, now very short of food, into a frenzy of preparation. Away they all went in a bedlam, men and women, children and dogs, to the shores of the Great River, where they rioted in the camps by night and chased the buffalo on the outlying plains by day.
Every woman had her own pottery cooking-vessel. Savory stew was served at any hour in the twenty-four. Surplus meat was dried in the smoke of her smudges as she "jerked" it for future use.
Each child took part in this annual event. The tenth little Indian, the smallest hunter that ever stood in moccasins, had his own arrows and a buffalo calf for practice.
Pelts piled up like bales. Accau counted them by dozens.
If any one had told Anthony that in the beginning of the twentieth century a North American Indian of the Carlisle School would hold the world's record for all-around athletic prowess he certainly would have nodded that he believed it. "Day after day," he said, "the lithe Narrhetoba, with a single bow, set hisnimble feet to the sport of running down a buffalo and his deft hands to the game of slaying it by means of a stone-tipped arrow. That is more than I can do."
It wastooeasy for that active chieftain. He was bored with the old-fashioned exercise. He longed for the white man's steel and the new sensations to come in using a gun.
The friar and Anthony proposed to him, "Allow us to take a canoe and go down to the mouth of the Wisconsin in search of the traders the Sieur La Salle had promised to send after us." Both Narrhetoba and Ouasicoude agreed to do this. So Anthony and Père Louis slipped quietly away.
Accau stayed as hostage. He had a faint hope of retrieving some of his goods in the possession of these people, or, what was better, to get in place of his trinkets a cargo of buffalo-skins. His business eye saw the pelts growing in value during the hunt. Even the littlest Indian's calf-skin would be worth moneyifhe caught it. And the bereaved parent who had shed the chasuble but kept the handy Franciscan cord acquired a sumptuous collection which Accau coveted.
"The capitals of Europe are clamoring for pelts from the New World. The princes and nobility of civilization admire the soft skins with which savages adorned themselves," he repeated over and over.
"The fur trade of the colonies promised to make the mother country rich. Ever since those daring young adventurers, the Sieurs De Radisson and Groseilliers, plunged into the northwestern wilds in 1654 and at the end of two years came out again in spectacular parade with three hundred Algonquins and sixty canoes, bringing forty thousand dollars' worth of pelts, all fortune-hunters had been eager to do something of the same kind."
Those first successful Frenchmen arranged a business alliance with some Englishmen and became the promoters of the Hudson Bay Company, which had immense influence in the early times and which to-day still buys furs of the Indians and sells them in the courts of kings.
Other companies were organized and the industry thrived. St. Louis on the Mississippi finally came to be the center of a fur trade carrying on one of those big businesses which are the pride of the United States.
Private speculators went into the trade with zest. Almost any person who had capital enough to buy a canoe, arm and munitions, supplies, cutlery and beads, would outfit acoureur de boisand encourage him to try his luck.
Almost half of thesevoyageursperished in the wilderness. Romance, adventure, freedom, license, and wealth were the bait to lure them. Panthers, Indians, snakes, malaria, and rapids were the traps that caught them.
Accau liked the trader's life and as long as he could stay by the fruits of this Sioux hunt he meant to do so. His employer, the Sieur La Salle, expected the buffalo herds to pay the expenses of settling and developing the valley of the Great River. Accau kept near the front of the chase, and because they were without definite plans it was not hard to lead the Sioux with more and more rapidity down the banks of the river in the direction the friar and Anthony had taken and toward the spot where the traders might appear.
A pageant now took possession of the upper Mississippi. As it passed the hidden creatures of the wild watched with bright, frightened eyes the enemies who were to affect so powerfully all those species in furry clothes.
First came Father Louis Hennepin and Anthony Auguelle, the Picard du Gay. They held the key to the northwest regions. Maps and observations, a new language and the right of discovery were all theirs.
Next, close on their trail, silently and secretly, sneaked old Aquipaguetin and ten of his warriors. They had the nine points which possession gives. They would not let any prisoners escape, no matter how reasonable their excuses mightsound. No strangers should get away to tell the white race the secrets of the Sioux.
Far out of sight behind the warriors the hunting party, lured by King Charles's antics and Accau's purpose, straggled along the shore. A fortune in pelts was carelessly dragging in their untidy baggage.
Last of all there came swiftly down the stream a third canoe. Its appearance was one of those accidents which change the course of large events. In it were two Indian guides, a French gentleman and four of his followers.
The gentleman was the Sieur DuLuth. He was an agent for one of the Canadian fur companies and had been spending a year in the neighborhood of the west end of Lake Superior. He had planted the French arms in the waters where the first tributaries of the Mississippi rise and had claimed much new soil and found many haunts of small fur-bearing animals.
He was now roving south by way of the St. Croix River. It emptied into a magnificent stream, which he guessed must be the fabled Father of Waters. He stopped there to gossip with the squaws he saw. They told him that on this Great River some white men, prisoners of the Sioux, were only two days distant.
Sieur DuLuth knew the uncertain temper of the Sioux. Indeed it has never changed. There are old men now living on the shore where theSieur DuLuth stood who can tell of their own youthful part in the Sioux wars of the 1860's when the Minnesota tribes behaved very much as Anthony saw them do.
"We must go to the rescue of these white men," the Sieur DuLuth had promptly decided, "and join forces with them. Together we will be able to interest the Indians in trading and so persuade them to make treaties."
In the mean time, Anthony and the friar were in doleful plight. They had no stores. Ten charges of powder were their only ammunition. They planned to keep it for self-defense. Instead of shooting game, they snared fish, captured turtles, chased woodchuck. Hunger was a constant companion. Wild fruits, of unknown species, made them ill. The hope of meeting the traders buoyed them. They bore each hardship as though it had been a blessing and went bravely on.
Little thinking that some one was all this time steadily following his course, coming nearer and nearer, Anthony seldom looked back.
One day he glanced up from the cooking of a scanty dinner. Peering at him over the edge of the bank were the eyes of an Indian. At least he thought it was an Indian, but when he went to look he found nothing.
At supper-time, farther down the stream,he had the uncanny feeling of being watched.Headvanced slowly toward the brink. The dismay in his face was reflected by the friar, for Aquipaguetin rose up and confronted them. He should have been hundreds of miles away. Every little hair on Anthony's body stirred separately as he wondered how long that revengeful savage had been within club-throwing distance.
With a single gesture the chief bade them stand still. A stone club and evil scowl emphasized his meaning. A painted warrior came over the river's bank and stood beside him. The warrior wore a tremendous bonnet. It stuck gay feathers aloft and dangled them all the way to the ground. Beads by the dozen, from Accau's precious stores, made him twinkle like a jeweler's window. He was fully armed. Another in similar garb came and joined the two; then another and another.
The explorers had no inkling of what these Indians meant to do. It was hard for Anthony to keep a cool and indifferent attitude until ten savages in gorgeous array had slowly appeared and formed themselves into a background for Aquipaguetin.
They were dressed for some special occasion. Indians are masters of the language of signs. The old chief, by a few pointings here and there and a motion or two, gave them to understand that he was on his way down the river to the mouth of the Wisconsin.
"Are you on your way to meet the traders?" asked the friar in a sentence which he thought excellent Sioux.
Aquipaguetin was.
"You wily old strategist!" cried Anthony. "If the traders come you want to get first choice of their goods. If they don't come you will be ahead of us on the river to cut off our escape: How I hate you!"
All the warriors nodded solemnly at Anthony. What a pity they didn't understand his language!
They circled around to show the white men how many and strong they were. The chief repeated his command for the Frenchmen not to follow him and hurried away. All the warriors trailed after him.
Anthony and the friar went at breakneck speed in the opposite direction to protect themselves by again joining the hunting party. How utterly downcast they would have been could they have known that the Sieur La Salle's traders would never keep the tryst on which all the captives' thoughts were fixed.
For that fort had come to extremity. No sooner had the commandant gone for food and munitions to sustain them than the dozen knaves in the stockade, who outnumbered the honest men, had mutinied. They burned the fort, stole all the valuables they could carry. Everything else they threw into the river.The peaceful Indians camped round about the fort had been massacred by warlike tribes and their hamlets burned. Desolation reigned.
Where now the beautiful American city of Peoria stands, there were only ashes, bones, and the memory of the ill-starred Fort Crevecœur.
Accau became alarmed when he found out that Aquipaguetin had also gone down the river. He led the hunting party more rapidly in that direction and constantly watched for his friends.
Great was his relief to see them returning. But when he could discover no traders with them he was filled with foreboding.
As Anthony and the friar paddled up to the camp it looked like home to them. The summer sky, the sweet west wind, the billowing plain, the bronze hunters, the odor of the squaws' cooking-pots, the voices of children were all sources of delight.
At their approach the cheerful racket died down; the tribe stood still; all interest focused in one question. "Where are the traders?" The friar shook his head; an ominous silence followed. King Charles ran forward barking welcome. No one else was glad to see them.
Anthony begged: "We are hungry. Give us food."
"Where are the traders?" came the sullen chorus.
"We did not find them," was Père Louis' apology.
Narrhetoba's brow grew dark. Ouasicoude's silence was appalling.
At this unhappy moment who should whirl round a bend in full sight of the hunters but the Nemesis, Aquipaguetin!
In the few days that it had taken Anthony and the friar to reach the camp, the old chief, taxing to the utmost those famous paddle muscles of his warriors, had gone down to the mouth of the Wisconsin, found no traders, turned himself about and came back again at double speed in rage supreme.
He leaped ashore. The armed force of his warriors filed in fierce array on his heels.
"White men are liars!" he thundered. "There are no traders!"
The warriors, with long groans, burst into tears.
The hunters caught up their weapons. They rushed at the Frenchmen. Squaws stirred their fires—something more interesting than food was promised for a roasting. The ten little Indians hopped up and down with joy at the prospect of savage sport.
The story of the northern Mississippi, all the hard-won knowledge of its course, might have been blotted out then and there. Three lives could have vanished in faggot smoke and left no trace.
But the Sieur DuLuth was energetic with his paddles also. The Sioux too often meant mischief. The Frenchmen might need him. White men who met Sioux generallydidrequire help.
In the midst of the powwow—for Indians can seldom do anything without a powwow—the third canoe appeared upon the river.
How like guardian angels the weather-beaten faces of the new-comers looked to the doomed men; how much sweeter than any music was the Sieur DuLuth's shout: "We are traders! Friends to the red men and friends to the white!"
The camp exploded with glee. Everybody, even Aquipaguetin, scrambled to the water's edge. DuLuth and his men were pulled ashore and embraced ecstatically. Greedy eyes feasted on his bulging stores. How they loved him! What affection they had for all white men!
They underwent violent reaction. "Get out the peace-pipes," was one command. "Bring on a feast," was another.
To the savages gloating over the prospect of bartering their buffalo-skins for weapons and trinkets it was an unimportant detail that these two parties of Frenchmen to whom New France looked for the establishment of a vast business should be meeting for the first time.
Traders had been promised; traders had come: that was enough for them.
All the little Indians and a hundred big ones hastened to show their gratitude. Friendship between the two races was established straightway. Ouasicoude uttered the ultimatum of the Sioux: "The Frenchmen are welcome to all the fur they can carry. We will give them much food. They may go when they please and where they like. They are free!"