France and England in North America, Part III: La Salle, Discovery of The Great West
hands were besmirched with charcoal; and he was further decorated with
two opossums which hung from his belt, and which he had killed with a
stick as they were swinging head downwards from the bough of a tree,
after the fashion of that singular beast. He had missed his way in the
forest, and had been forced to make a wide circuit around the edge of a
swamp; while the snow, of which the air was full, added to his
perplexities. Thus he pushed on through the rest of the day and the
greater part of the night, till, about two o'clock in the morning, he
reached the river again, and fired his gun as a signal to his party.
Hearing no answering shot, he pursued his way along the bank, when he
presently saw the gleam of a fire among the dense thickets close at
hand. Not doubting that he had found the bivouac of his party, he
hastened to the spot. To his surprise, no human being was to be seen.
Under a tree beside the fire was a heap of dry grass impressed with the
form of a man who must have fled but a moment before, for his couch was
still warm. It was no doubt an Indian, ambushed on the bank, watching to
kill some passing enemy. La Salle called out in several Indian
languages; but there was dead silence all around. He then, with
admirable coolness, took possession of the quarters he had found,
shouting to their invisible proprietor that he was about to sleep in
his bed; piled a barricade of bushes around the spot, rekindled the
dying fire, warmed his benumbed hands, stretched himself on the dried
grass, and slept undisturbed till morning.
The Mohegan had rejoined the party before La Salle's return, and with
his aid the portage was soon found. Here the party encamped. La Salle,
who was excessively fatigued, occupied, together with Hennepin, a wigwam
covered in the Indian manner with mats of reeds. The cold forced them to
kindle a fire, which before daybreak set the mats in a blaze; and the
two sleepers narrowly escaped being burned along with their hut.
[Sidenote: THE KANKAKEE.]
In the morning, the party shouldered their canoes and baggage and began
their march for the sources of the river Illinois, some five miles
distant. Around them stretched a desolate plain, half-covered with snow
and strewn with the skulls and bones of buffalo; while, on its farthest
verge, they could see the lodges of the Miami Indians, who had made this
place their abode. As they filed on their way, a man named Duplessis,
bearing a grudge against La Salle, who walked just before him, raised
his gun to shoot him through the back, but was prevented by one of his
comrades. They soon reached a spot where the oozy, saturated soil quaked
beneath their tread. All around were clumps of alder-bushes, tufts of
rank grass, and pools of glistening water. In the midst a dark and lazy
current, which a tall man might bestride, crept twisting like a snake
among the weeds and rushes. Here were the sources of the Kankakee, one
of the heads of the Illinois.[141] They set their canoes on this thread
of water, embarked their baggage and themselves, and pushed down the
sluggish streamlet, looking, at a little distance, like men who sailed
on land. Fed by an unceasing tribute of the spongy soil, it quickly
widened to a river; and they floated on their way through a voiceless,
lifeless solitude of dreary oak barrens, or boundless marshes overgrown
with reeds. At night, they built their fire on ground made firm by
frost, and bivouacked among the rushes. A few days brought them to a
more favored region. On the right hand and on the left stretched the
boundless prairie, dotted with leafless groves and bordered by gray
wintry forests, scorched by the fires kindled in the dried grass by
Indian hunters, and strewn with the carcasses and the bleached skulls of
innumerable buffalo. The plains were scored with their pathways, and the
muddy edges of the river were full of their hoof-prints. Yet not one was
to be seen. At night, the horizon glowed with distant fires; and by day
the savage hunters could be descried at times roaming on the verge of
the prairie. The men, discontented and half-starved, would have deserted
to them had they dared. La Salle's Mohegan could kill no game except two
lean deer, with a few wild geese and swans. At length, in their straits,
they made a happy discovery. It was a buffalo bull, fast mired in a
slough. They killed him, lashed a cable about him, and then twelve men
dragged out the shaggy monster, whose ponderous carcass demanded their
utmost efforts.
The scene changed again as they descended. On either hand ran ranges of
woody hills, following the course of the river; and when they mounted to
their tops, they saw beyond them a rolling sea of dull green prairie, a
boundless pasture of the buffalo and the deer, in our own day strangely
transformed,--yellow in harvest-time with ripened wheat, and dotted with
the roofs of a hardy and valiant yeomanry.[142]
[Sidenote: THE ILLINOIS TOWN.]
They passed the site of the future town of Ottawa, and saw on their
right the high plateau of Buffalo Rock, long a favorite dwelling-place
of Indians. A league below, the river glided among islands bordered with
stately woods. Close on their left towered a lofty cliff,[143] crested
with trees that overhung the rippling current; while before them spread
the valley of the Illinois, in broad low meadows, bordered on the right
by the graceful hills at whose foot now lies the village of Utica. A
population far more numerous then tenanted the valley. Along the right
bank of the river were clustered the lodges of a great Indian town.
Hennepin counted four hundred and sixty of them.[144] In shape, they
were somewhat like the arched top of a baggage-wagon. They were built
of a framework of poles, covered with mats of rushes closely interwoven;
and each contained three or four fires, of which the greater part served
for two families.
[Sidenote: HUNGER RELIEVED.]
Here, then, was the town; but where were the inhabitants? All was silent
as the desert. The lodges were empty, the fires dead, and the ashes
cold. La Salle had expected this; for he knew that in the autumn the
Illinois always left their towns for their winter hunting, and that the
time of their return had not yet come. Yet he was not the less
embarrassed, for he would fain have bought a supply of food to relieve
his famished followers. Some of them, searching the deserted town,
presently found the _caches_, or covered pits, in which the Indians hid
their stock of corn. This was precious beyond measure in their eyes, and
to touch it would be a deep offence. La Salle shrank from provoking
their anger, which might prove the ruin of his plans; but his necessity
overcame his prudence, and he took thirty _minots_ of corn, hoping to
appease the owners by presents. Thus provided, the party embarked again,
and resumed their downward voyage.
On New Year's Day, 1680, they landed and heard mass. Then Hennepin
wished a happy new year to La Salle first, and afterwards to all the
men, making them a speech, which, as he tells us, was "most
touching."[145] He and his two brethren next embraced the whole company
in turn, "in a manner," writes the father, "most tender and
affectionate," exhorting them, at the same time, to patience, faith, and
constancy. Four days after these solemnities, they reached the long
expansion of the river then called Pimitoui, and now known as Peoria
Lake, and leisurely made their way downward to the site of the city of
Peoria.[146] Here, as evening drew near, they saw a faint spire of
smoke curling above the gray forest, betokening that Indians were at
hand. La Salle, as we have seen, had been warned that these tribes had
been taught to regard him as their enemy; and when, in the morning, he
resumed his course, he was prepared alike for peace or war.
The shores now approached each other; and the Illinois was once more a
river, bordered on either hand with overhanging woods.[147]
At nine o'clock, doubling a point, he saw about eighty Illinois wigwams,
on both sides of the river. He instantly ordered the eight canoes to be
ranged in line, abreast, across the stream,--Tonty on the right, and he
himself on the left. The men laid down their paddles and seized their
weapons; while, in this warlike guise, the current bore them swiftly
into the midst of the surprised and astounded savages. The camps were in
a panic. Warriors whooped and howled; squaws and children screeched in
chorus. Some snatched their bows and war-clubs; some ran in terror; and,
in the midst of the hubbub, La Salle leaped ashore, followed by his men.
None knew better how to deal with Indians; and he made no sign of
friendship, knowing that it might be construed as a token of fear. His
little knot of Frenchmen stood, gun in hand, passive, yet prepared for
battle. The Indians, on their part, rallying a little from their
fright, made all haste to proffer peace. Two of their chiefs came
forward, holding out the calumet; while another began a loud harangue,
to check the young warriors who were aiming their arrows from the
farther bank. La Salle, responding to these friendly overtures,
displayed another calumet; while Hennepin caught several scared children
and soothed them with winning blandishments.[148] The uproar was
quelled; and the strangers were presently seated in the midst of the
camp, beset by a throng of wild and swarthy figures.
[Sidenote: ILLINOIS HOSPITALITY.]
Food was placed before them; and, as the Illinois code of courtesy
enjoined, their entertainers conveyed the morsels with their own hands
to the lips of these unenviable victims of their hospitality, while
others rubbed their feet with bear's grease. La Salle, on his part, made
them a gift of tobacco and hatchets; and when he had escaped from their
caresses, rose and harangued them. He told them that he had been forced
to take corn from their granaries, lest his men should die of hunger;
but he prayed them not to be offended, promising full restitution or
ample payment. He had come, he said, to protect them against their
enemies, and teach them to pray to the true God. As for the Iroquois,
they were subjects of the Great King, and therefore brethren of the
French; yet, nevertheless, should they begin a war and invade the
country of the Illinois, he would stand by them, give them guns, and
fight in their defence, if they would permit him to build a fort among
them for the security of his men. It was also, he added, his purpose to
build a great wooden canoe, in which to descend the Mississippi to the
sea, and then return, bringing them the goods of which they stood in
need; but if they would not consent to his plans and sell provisions to
his men, he would pass on to the Osages, who would then reap all the
benefits of intercourse with the French, while they were left destitute,
at the mercy of the Iroquois.[149]
This threat had its effect, for it touched their deep-rooted jealousy of
the Osages. They were lavish of promises, and feasts and dances consumed
the day. Yet La Salle soon learned that the intrigues of his enemies
were still pursuing him. That evening, unknown to him, a stranger
appeared in the Illinois camp. He was a Mascoutin chief, named Monso,
attended by five or six Miamis, and bringing a gift of knives, hatchets,
and kettles to the Illinois.[150] The chiefs assembled in a secret
nocturnal session, where, smoking their pipes, they listened with open
ears to the harangue of the envoys. Monso told them that he had come in
behalf of certain Frenchmen, whom he named, to warn his hearers against
the designs of La Salle, whom he denounced as a partisan and spy of the
Iroquois, affirming that he was now on his way to stir up the tribes
beyond the Mississippi to join in a war against the Illinois, who, thus