France and England in North America, Part III: La Salle, Discovery of The Great West
and a frightful expression of countenance. The face is something like
that of a man, the body covered with scales; and the tail so long that
it passes entirely round the body, over the head and between the legs,
ending like that of a fish." Such is the account which the worthy Jesuit
gives of these manitous, or Indian gods.[55] He confesses that at first
they frightened him; and his imagination and that of his credulous
companions was so wrought upon by these unhallowed efforts of Indian
art, that they continued for a long time to talk of them as they plied
their paddles. They were thus engaged, when they were suddenly aroused
by a real danger. A torrent of yellow mud rushed furiously athwart the
calm blue current of the Mississippi, boiling and surging, and sweeping
in its course logs, branches, and uprooted trees. They had reached the
mouth of the Missouri, where that savage river, descending from its mad
career through a vast unknown of barbarism, poured its turbid floods
into the bosom of its gentler sister. Their light canoes whirled on the
miry vortex like dry leaves on an angry brook. "I never," writes
Marquette, "saw anything more terrific;" but they escaped with their
fright, and held their way down the turbulent and swollen current of the
now united rivers.[56] They passed the lonely forest that covered the
site of the destined city of St. Louis, and, a few days later, saw on
their left the mouth of the stream to which the Iroquois had given the
well-merited name of Ohio, or the "Beautiful River."[57] Soon they began
to see the marshy shores buried in a dense growth of the cane, with its
tall straight stems and feathery light-green foliage. The sun glowed
through the hazy air with a languid stifling heat, and by day and night
mosquitoes in myriads left them no peace. They floated slowly down the
current, crouched in the shade of the sails which they had spread as
awnings, when suddenly they saw Indians on the east bank. The surprise
was mutual, and each party was as much frightened as the other.
Marquette hastened to display the calumet which the Illinois had given
him by way of passport; and the Indians, recognizing the pacific symbol,
replied with an invitation to land. Evidently, they were in
communication with Europeans, for they were armed with guns, knives, and
hatchets, wore garments of cloth, and carried their gunpowder in small
bottles of thick glass. They feasted the Frenchmen with buffalo-meat,
bear's oil, and white plums; and gave them a variety of doubtful
information, including the agreeable but delusive assurance that they
would reach the mouth of the river in ten days. It was, in fact, more
than a thousand miles distant.
[Sidenote: THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI.]
They resumed their course, and again floated down the interminable
monotony of river, marsh, and forest. Day after day passed on in
solitude, and they had paddled some three hundred miles since their
meeting with the Indians, when, as they neared the mouth of the
Arkansas, they saw a cluster of wigwams on the west bank. Their inmates
were all astir, yelling the war-whoop, snatching their weapons, and
running to the shore to meet the strangers, who, on their part, called
for succor to the Virgin. In truth, they had need of her aid; for
several large wooden canoes, filled with savages, were putting out from
the shore, above and below them, to cut off their retreat, while a swarm
of headlong young warriors waded into the water to attack them. The
current proved too strong; and, failing to reach the canoes of the
Frenchmen, one of them threw his war-club, which flew over the heads of
the startled travellers. Meanwhile, Marquette had not ceased to hold up
his calumet, to which the excited crowd gave no heed, but strung their
bows and notched their arrows for immediate action; when at length the
elders of the village arrived, saw the peace-pipe, restrained the ardor
of the youth, and urged the Frenchmen to come ashore. Marquette and his
companions complied, trembling, and found a better reception than they
had reason to expect. One of the Indians spoke a little Illinois, and
served as interpreter; a friendly conference was followed by a feast of
sagamite and fish; and the travellers, not without sore misgivings,
spent the night in the lodges of their entertainers.[58]
[Sidenote: THE ARKANSAS.]
Early in the morning, they embarked again, and proceeded to a village of
the Arkansas tribe, about eight leagues below. Notice of their coming
was sent before them by their late hosts; and as they drew near they
were met by a canoe, in the prow of which stood a naked personage,
holding a calumet, singing, and making gestures of friendship. On
reaching the village, which was on the east side,[59] opposite the mouth
of the river Arkansas, they were conducted to a sort of scaffold, before
the lodge of the war-chief. The space beneath had been prepared for
their reception, the ground being neatly covered with rush mats. On
these they were seated; the warriors sat around them in a semi-circle;
then the elders of the tribe; and then the promiscuous crowd of
villagers, standing, and staring over the heads of the more dignified
members of the assembly. All the men were naked; but, to compensate for
the lack of clothing, they wore strings of beads in their noses and
ears. The women were clothed in shabby skins, and wore their hair
clumped in a mass behind each ear. By good luck, there was a young
Indian in the village, who had an excellent knowledge of Illinois; and
through him Marquette endeavored to explain the mysteries of
Christianity, and to gain information concerning the river below. To
this end he gave his auditors the presents indispensable on such
occasions, but received very little in return. They told him that the
Mississippi was infested by hostile Indians, armed with guns procured
from white men; and that they, the Arkansas, stood in such fear of them
that they dared not hunt the buffalo, but were forced to live on Indian
corn, of which they raised three crops a year.
During the speeches on either side, food was brought in without
ceasing,--sometimes a platter of sagamite or mush; sometimes of corn
boiled whole; sometimes a roasted dog. The villagers had large earthen
pots and platters, made by themselves with tolerable skill, as well as
hatchets, knives, and beads, gained by traffic with the Illinois and
other tribes in contact with the French or Spaniards. All day there was
feasting without respite, after the merciless practice of Indian
hospitality; but at night some of their entertainers proposed to kill
and plunder them,--a scheme which was defeated by the vigilance of the
chief, who visited their quarters, and danced the calumet dance to
reassure his guests.
The travellers now held counsel as to what course they should take. They
had gone far enough, as they thought, to establish one important
point,--that the Mississippi discharged its waters, not into the
Atlantic or sea of Virginia, nor into the Gulf of California or
Vermilion Sea, but into the Gulf of Mexico. They thought themselves
nearer to its mouth than they actually were, the distance being still
about seven hundred miles; and they feared that if they went farther
they might be killed by Indians or captured by Spaniards, whereby the
results of their discovery would be lost. Therefore they resolved to
return to Canada, and report what they had seen.
They left the Arkansas village, and began their homeward voyage on the
seventeenth of July. It was no easy task to urge their way upward, in
the heat of midsummer, against the current of the dark and gloomy
stream, toiling all day under the parching sun, and sleeping at night in
the exhalations of the unwholesome shore, or in the narrow confines of
their birchen vessels, anchored on the river. Marquette was attacked
with dysentery. Languid and well-nigh spent, he invoked his celestial
mistress, as day after day, and week after week, they won their slow way
northward. At length, they reached the Illinois, and, entering its
mouth, followed its course, charmed, as they went, with its placid
waters, its shady forests, and its rich plains, grazed by the bison and
the deer. They stopped at a spot soon to be made famous in the annals of
western discovery. This was a village of the Illinois, then called
"Kaskaskia;" a name afterwards transferred to another locality.[60] A
chief, with a band of young warriors, offered to guide them to the Lake
of the Illinois; that is to say, Lake Michigan. Thither they repaired;
and, coasting its shores, reached Green Bay at the end of September,
after an absence of about four months, during which they had paddled
their canoes somewhat more than two thousand five hundred miles.[61]
[Sidenote: RETURN TO CANADA.]
Marquette remained to recruit his exhausted strength; but Joliet
descended to Quebec, to bear the report of his discovery to Count
Frontenac. Fortune had wonderfully favored him on his long and perilous
journey; but now she abandoned him on the very threshold of home. At the
foot of the rapids of La Chine, and immediately above Montreal, his
canoe was overset, two of his men and an Indian boy were drowned, all
his papers were lost, and he himself narrowly escaped.[62] In a letter
to Frontenac, he speaks of the accident as follows: "I had escaped every
peril from the Indians; I had passed forty-two rapids; and was on the
point of disembarking, full of joy at the success of so long and
difficult an enterprise, when my canoe capsized, after all the danger
seemed over. I lost two men and my box of papers, within sight of the
first French settlements, which I had left almost two years before.
Nothing remains to me but my life, and the ardent desire to employ it on
any service which you may please to direct."[63]
[Sidenote: MARQUETTE'S MISSION.]
Marquette spent the winter and the following summer at the mission of
Green Bay, still suffering from his malady. In the autumn, however, it
abated; and he was permitted by his Superior to attempt the execution of
a plan to which he was devotedly attached,--the founding, at the
principal town of the Illinois, of a mission to be called the
"Immaculate Conception," a name which he had already given to the river
Mississippi. He set out on this errand on the twenty-fifth of October,
accompanied by two men, named Pierre and Jacques, one of whom had been
with him on his great journey of discovery. A band of Pottawattamies and
another band of Illinois also joined him. The united parties--ten canoes
in all--followed the east shore of Green Bay as far as the inlet then
called "Sturgeon Cove," from the head of which they crossed by a
difficult portage through the forest to the shore of Lake Michigan.
November had come. The bright hues of the autumn foliage were changed to
rusty brown. The shore was desolate, and the lake was stormy. They were
more than a month in coasting its western border, when at length they
reached the river Chicago, entered it, and ascended about two leagues.
Marquette's disease had lately returned, and hemorrhage now ensued. He
told his two companions that this journey would be his last. In the
condition in which he was, it was impossible to go farther. The two men
built a log hut by the river, and here they prepared to spend the
winter; while Marquette, feeble as he was, began the spiritual exercises
of Saint Ignatius, and confessed his two companions twice a week.
Meadow, marsh, and forest were sheeted with snow, but game was abundant.
Pierre and Jacques killed buffalo and deer, and shot wild turkeys close
to their hut. There was an encampment of Illinois within two days'
journey; and other Indians, passing by this well-known thoroughfare,
occasionally visited them, treating the exiles kindly, and sometimes