France and England in North America, Part III: La Salle, Discovery of The Great West
him free. The dispute grew fierce and hot. Tonty told them that the
Illinois were twelve hundred strong, and that sixty Frenchmen were at
the village, ready to back them. This invention, though not fully
believed, had no little effect. The friendly Onondaga carried his point;
and the Iroquois, having failed to surprise their enemies, as they had
hoped, now saw an opportunity to delude them by a truce. They sent back
Tonty with a belt of peace: he held it aloft in sight of the Illinois;
chiefs and old warriors ran to stop the fight; the yells and the firing
ceased; and Tonty, like one waked from a hideous nightmare, dizzy,
almost fainting with loss of blood, staggered across the intervening
prairie, to rejoin his friends. He was met by the two friars, Ribourde
and Membré, who in their secluded hut, a league from the village, had
but lately heard of what was passing, and who now, with benedictions and
thanksgiving, ran to embrace him as a man escaped from the jaws of
death.
The Illinois now withdrew, re-embarking in their canoes, and crossing
again to their lodges; but scarcely had they reached them, when their
enemies appeared at the edge of the forest on the opposite bank. Many
found means to cross, and, under the pretext of seeking for provisions,
began to hover in bands about the skirts of the town, constantly
increasing in numbers. Had the Illinois dared to remain, a massacre
would doubtless have ensued; but they knew their foe too well, set fire
to their lodges, embarked in haste, and paddled down the stream to
rejoin their women and children at the sanctuary among the morasses. The
whole body of the Iroquois now crossed the river, took possession of the
abandoned town, building for themselves a rude redoubt or fort of the
trunks of trees and of the posts and poles forming the framework of the
lodges which escaped the fire. Here they ensconced themselves, and
finished the work of havoc at their leisure.
Tonty and his companions still occupied their hut; but the Iroquois,
becoming suspicious of them, forced them to remove to the fort, crowded
as it was with the savage crew. On the second day, there was an alarm.
The Illinois appeared in numbers on the low hills, half a mile behind
the town; and the Iroquois, who had felt their courage, and who had
been told by Tonty that they were twice as numerous as themselves,
showed symptoms of no little uneasiness. They proposed that he should
act as mediator, to which he gladly assented, and crossed the meadow
towards the Illinois, accompanied by Membré, and by an Iroquois who was
sent as a hostage. The Illinois hailed the overtures with delight, gave
the ambassadors some refreshment, which they sorely needed, and sent
back with them a young man of their nation as a hostage on their part.
This indiscreet youth nearly proved the ruin of the negotiation; for he
was no sooner among the Iroquois than he showed such an eagerness to
close the treaty, made such promises, professed such gratitude, and
betrayed so rashly the numerical weakness of the Illinois, that he
revived all the insolence of the invaders. They turned furiously upon
Tonty, and charged him with having robbed them of the glory and the
spoils of victory. "Where are all your Illinois warriors, and where are
the sixty Frenchmen that you said were among them?" It needed all
Tonty's tact and coolness to extricate himself from this new danger.
[Sidenote: IROQUOIS TREACHERY.]
The treaty was at length concluded; but scarcely was it made, when the
Iroquois prepared to break it, and set about constructing canoes of
elm-bark, in which to attack the Illinois women and children in their
island sanctuary. Tonty warned his allies that the pretended peace was
but a snare for their destruction. The Iroquois, on their part, grew
hourly more jealous of him, and would certainly have killed him, had it
not been their policy to keep the peace with Frontenac and the French.
Several days after, they summoned him and Membré to a council. Six packs
of beaver-skins were brought in; and the savage orator presented them to
Tonty in turn, explaining their meaning as he did so. The first two were
to declare that the children of Count Frontenac--that is, the
Illinois--should not be eaten; the next was a plaster to heal Tonty's
wound; the next was oil wherewith to anoint him and Membré, that they
might not be fatigued in travelling; the next proclaimed that the sun
was bright; and the sixth and last required them to decamp and go
home.[191] Tonty thanked them for their gifts, but demanded when they
themselves meant to go and leave the Illinois in peace. At this, the
conclave grew angry; and, despite their late pledge, some of them said
that before they went they would eat Illinois flesh. Tonty instantly
kicked away the packs of beaver-skins, the Indian symbol of the scornful
rejection of a proposal, telling them that since they meant to eat the
governor's children he would have none of their presents. The chiefs,
in a rage, rose and drove him from the lodge. The French withdrew to
their hut, where they stood all night on the watch, expecting an attack,
and resolved to sell their lives dearly. At daybreak, the chiefs ordered
them to begone.
[Sidenote: MURDER OF RIBOURDE.]
Tonty, with admirable fidelity and courage, had done all in the power of
man to protect the allies of Canada against their ferocious assailants;
and he thought it unwise to persist further in a course which could lead
to no good, and which would probably end in the destruction of the whole
party. He embarked in a leaky canoe with Membré, Ribourde, Boisrondet,
and the remaining two men, and began to ascend the river. After paddling
about five leagues, they landed to dry their baggage and repair their
crazy vessel; when Father Ribourde, breviary in hand, strolled across
the sunny meadows for an hour of meditation among the neighboring
groves. Evening approached, and he did not return. Tonty, with one of
the men, went to look for him, and, following his tracks, presently
discovered those of a band of Indians, who had apparently seized or
murdered him. Still, they did not despair. They fired their guns to
guide him, should he still be alive; built a huge fire by the bank, and
then, crossing the river, lay watching it from the other side. At
midnight, they saw the figure of a man hovering around the blaze; then
many more appeared, but Ribourde was not among them. In truth, a band of
Kickapoos, enemies of the Iroquois, about whose camp they had been
prowling in quest of scalps, had met and wantonly murdered the
inoffensive old man. They carried his scalp to their village, and danced
round it in triumph, pretending to have taken it from an enemy. Thus, in
his sixty-fifth year, the only heir of a wealthy Burgundian house
perished under the war-clubs of the savages for whose salvation he had
renounced station, ease, and affluence.[192]
[Sidenote: ATTACK OF THE IROQUOIS.]
Meanwhile, a hideous scene was enacted at the ruined village of the
Illinois. Their savage foes, balked of a living prey, wreaked their fury
on the dead. They dug up the graves; they threw down the scaffolds. Some
of the bodies they burned; some they threw to the dogs; some, it is
affirmed, they ate.[193] Placing the skulls on stakes as trophies, they
turned to pursue the Illinois, who, when the French withdrew, had
abandoned their asylum and retreated down the river. The Iroquois,
still, it seems, in awe of them, followed them along the opposite bank,
each night encamping face to face with them; and thus the adverse bands
moved slowly southward, till they were near the mouth of the river.
Hitherto, the compact array of the Illinois had held their enemies in
check; but now, suffering from hunger, and lulled into security by the
assurances of the Iroquois that their object was not to destroy them,
but only to drive them from the country, they rashly separated into
their several tribes. Some descended the Mississippi; some, more
prudent, crossed to the western side. One of their principal tribes, the
Tamaroas, more credulous than the rest, had the fatuity to remain near
the mouth of the Illinois, where they were speedily assailed by all the
force of the Iroquois. The men fled, and very few of them were killed;
but the women and children were captured to the number, it is said, of
seven hundred.[194] Then followed that scene of torture of which, some
two weeks later, La Salle saw the revolting traces.[195] Sated, at
length, with horrors, the conquerors withdrew, leading with them a host
of captives, and exulting in their triumphs over women, children, and
the dead.
After the death of Father Ribourde, Tonty and his companions remained
searching for him till noon of the next day, and then in despair of
again seeing him, resumed their journey. They ascended the river,
leaving no token of their passage at the junction of its northern and
southern branches. For food, they gathered acorns and dug roots in the
meadows. Their canoe proved utterly worthless; and, feeble as they were,
they set out on foot for Lake Michigan. Boisrondet wandered off, and was
lost. He had dropped the flint of his gun, and he had no bullets; but he
cut a pewter porringer into slugs, with which he shot wild turkeys by
discharging his piece with a fire-brand, and after several days he had
the good fortune to rejoin the party. Their object was to reach the
Pottawattamies of Green Bay. Had they aimed at Michilimackinac, they
would have found an asylum with La Forest at the fort on the St. Joseph;
but unhappily they passed westward of that post, and, by way of Chicago,
followed the borders of Lake Michigan northward. The cold was intense;
and it was no easy task to grub up wild onions from the frozen ground to
save themselves from starving. Tonty fell ill of a fever and a swelling
of the limbs, which disabled him from travelling, and hence ensued a
long delay. At length they neared Green Bay, where they would have
starved, had they not gleaned a few ears of corn and frozen squashes in
the fields of an empty Indian town.
[Sidenote: FRIENDS IN NEED.]
This enabled them to reach the bay, and having patched an old canoe
which they had the good luck to find, they embarked in it; whereupon,
says Tonty, "there rose a northwest wind, which lasted five days, with
driving snow. We consumed all our food; and not knowing what to do next,
we resolved to go back to the deserted town, and die by a warm fire in
one of the wigwams. On our way, we saw a smoke; but our joy was short,
for when we reached the fire we found nobody there. We spent the night
by it; and before morning the bay froze. We tried to break a way for our
canoe through the ice, but could not; and therefore we determined to
stay there another night, and make moccasins in order to reach the town.
We made some out of Father Gabriel's cloak. I was angry with Étienne
Renault for not finishing his; but he excused himself on account of
illness, because he had a great oppression of the stomach, caused by
eating a piece of an Indian shield of raw-hide, which he could not
digest. His delay proved our salvation; for the next day, December
fourth, as I was urging him to finish the moccasins, and he was still
excusing himself on the score of his malady, a party of Kiskakon
Ottawas, who were on their way to the Pottawattamies, saw the smoke of
our fire, and came to us. We gave them such a welcome as was never seen
before. They took us into their canoes, and carried us to an Indian
village, only two leagues off. There we found five Frenchmen, who
received us kindly, and all the Indians seemed to take pleasure in
sending us food; so that, after thirty-four days of starvation, we found
our famine turned to abundance."