France and England in North America, Part III: La Salle, Discovery of The Great West
however, at their devotions. Hennepin said prayers at morning and night,
and the _angelus_ at noon, adding a petition to Saint Anthony of Padua
that he would save them from the peril that beset their way. In truth,
there was a lion in the path. The ferocious character of the Sioux, or
Dacotah, who occupied the region of the Upper Mississippi, was already
known to the French; and Hennepin, with excellent reason, prayed that it
might be his fortune to meet them, not by night, but by day.
[Sidenote: CAPTURED BY THE SIOUX.]
On the eleventh or twelfth of April, they stopped in the afternoon to
repair their canoe; and Hennepin busied himself in daubing it with
pitch, while the others cooked a turkey. Suddenly, a fleet of Sioux
canoes swept into sight, bearing a war-party of a hundred and twenty
naked savages, who on seeing the travellers raised a hideous clamor;
and, some leaping ashore and others into the water, they surrounded the
astonished Frenchmen in an instant.[209] Hennepin held out the
peace-pipe; but one of them snatched it from him. Next, he hastened to
proffer a gift of Martinique tobacco, which was better received. Some of
the old warriors repeated the name _Miamiha_, giving him to understand
that they were a war-party, on the way to attack the Miamis; on which,
Hennepin, with the help of signs and of marks which he drew on the sand
with a stick, explained that the Miamis had gone across the Mississippi,
beyond their reach. Hereupon, he says that three or four old men placed
their hands on his head, and began a dismal wailing; while he with his
handkerchief wiped away their tears, in order to evince sympathy with
their affliction, from whatever cause arising. Notwithstanding this
demonstration of tenderness, they refused to smoke with him in his
peace-pipe, and forced him and his companions to embark and paddle
across the river; while they all followed behind, uttering yells and
howlings which froze the missionary's blood.
On reaching the farther side, they made their camp-fires, and allowed
their prisoners to do the same. Accau and Du Gay slung their kettle;
while Hennepin, to propitiate the Sioux, carried to them two turkeys,
of which there were several in the canoe. The warriors had seated
themselves in a ring, to debate on the fate of the Frenchmen; and two
chiefs presently explained to the friar, by significant signs, that it
had been resolved that his head should be split with a war-club. This
produced the effect which was no doubt intended. Hennepin ran to the
canoe, and quickly returned with one of the men, both loaded with
presents, which he threw into the midst of the assembly; and then,
bowing his head, offered them at the same time a hatchet with which to
kill him, if they wished to do so. His gifts and his submission seemed
to appease them. They gave him and his companions a dish of beaver's
flesh; but, to his great concern, they returned his peace-pipe,--an act
which he interpreted as a sign of danger. That night the Frenchmen slept
little, expecting to be murdered before morning. There was, in fact, a
great division of opinion among the Sioux. Some were for killing them
and taking their goods; while others, eager above all things that French
traders should come among them with the knives, hatchets, and guns of
which they had heard the value, contended that it would be impolitic to
discourage the trade by putting to death its pioneers.
Scarcely had morning dawned on the anxious captives, when a young chief,
naked, and painted from head to foot, appeared before them and asked for
the pipe, which the friar gladly gave him. He filled it, smoked it,
made the warriors do the same, and, having given this hopeful pledge of
amity, told the Frenchmen that, since the Miamis were out of reach, the
war-party would return home, and that they must accompany them. To this
Hennepin gladly agreed, having, as he declares, his great work of
exploration so much at heart that he rejoiced in the prospect of
achieving it even in their company.
[Sidenote: SUSPECTED OF SORCERY.]
He soon, however, had a foretaste of the affliction in store for him;
for when he opened his breviary and began to mutter his morning
devotion, his new companions gathered about him with faces that betrayed
their superstitious terror, and gave him to understand that his book was
a bad spirit with which he must hold no more converse. They thought,
indeed, that he was muttering a charm for their destruction. Accau and
Du Gay, conscious of the danger, begged the friar to dispense with his
devotions, lest he and they alike should be tomahawked; but Hennepin
says that his sense of duty rose superior to his fears, and that he was
resolved to repeat his office at all hazards, though not until he had
asked pardon of his two friends for thus imperilling their lives.
Fortunately, he presently discovered a device by which his devotion and
his prudence were completely reconciled. He ceased the muttering which
had alarmed the Indians, and, with the breviary open on his knees, sang
the service in loud and cheerful tones. As this had no savor of sorcery,
and as they now imagined that the book was teaching its owner to sing
for their amusement, they conceived a favorable opinion of both alike.
These Sioux, it may be observed, were the ancestors of those who
committed the horrible but not unprovoked massacres of 1862, in the
valley of the St. Peter. Hennepin complains bitterly of their treatment
of him, which, however, seems to have been tolerably good. Afraid that
he would lag behind, as his canoe was heavy and slow,[210] they placed
several warriors in it to aid him and his men in paddling. They kept on
their way from morning till night, building huts for their bivouac when
it rained, and sleeping on the open ground when the weather was
fair,--which, says Hennepin, "gave us a good opportunity to contemplate
the moon and stars." The three Frenchmen took the precaution of sleeping
at the side of the young chief who had been the first to smoke the
peace-pipe, and who seemed inclined to befriend them; but there was
another chief, one Aquipaguetin, a crafty old savage, who having lost a
son in war with the Miamis, was angry that the party had abandoned their
expedition, and thus deprived him of his revenge. He therefore kept up a
dismal lament through half the night; while other old men, crouching
over Hennepin as he lay trying to sleep, stroked him with their hands,
and uttered wailings so lugubrious that he was forced to the belief
that he had been doomed to death, and that they were charitably
bemoaning his fate.[211]
[Sidenote: THE CAPTIVE FRIAR.]
One night, the captives were, for some reason, unable to bivouac near
their protector, and were forced to make their fire at the end of the
camp. Here they were soon beset by a crowd of Indians, who told them
that Aquipaguetin had at length resolved to tomahawk them. The
malcontents were gathered in a knot at a little distance, and Hennepin
hastened to appease them by another gift of knives and tobacco. This was
but one of the devices of the old chief to deprive them of their goods
without robbing them outright. He had with him the bones of a deceased
relative, which he was carrying home wrapped in skins prepared with
smoke after the Indian fashion, and gayly decorated with bands of dyed
porcupine quills. He would summon his warriors, and placing these relics
in the midst of the assembly, call on all present to smoke in their
honor; after which, Hennepin was required to offer a more substantial
tribute in the shape of cloth, beads, hatchets, tobacco, and the like,
to be laid upon the bundle of bones. The gifts thus acquired were then,
in the name of the deceased, distributed among the persons present.
On one occasion, Aquipaguetin killed a bear, and invited the chiefs and
warriors to feast upon it. They accordingly assembled on a prairie, west
of the river, where, after the banquet, they danced a "medicine-dance."
They were all painted from head to foot, with their hair oiled,
garnished with red and white feathers, and powdered with the down of
birds. In this guise they set their arms akimbo, and fell to stamping
with such fury that the hard prairie was dented with the prints of their
moccasins; while the chief's son, crying at the top of his throat, gave
to each in turn the pipe of war. Meanwhile, the chief himself, singing
in a loud and rueful voice, placed his hands on the heads of the three
Frenchmen, and from time to time interrupted his music to utter a
vehement harangue. Hennepin could not understand the words, but his
heart sank as the conviction grew strong within him that these
ceremonies tended to his destruction. It seems, however, that, after all
the chief's efforts, his party was in the minority, the greater part
being adverse to either killing or robbing the three strangers.
Every morning, at daybreak, an old warrior shouted the signal of
departure; and the recumbent savages leaped up, manned their birchen
fleet, and plied their paddles against the current, often without
waiting to break their fast. Sometimes they stopped for a buffalo-hunt
on the neighboring prairies; and there was no lack of provisions. They
passed Lake Pepin, which Hennepin called the Lake of Tears, by reason
of the howlings and lamentations here uttered over him by Aquipaguetin,
and nineteen days after his capture landed near the site of St. Paul.
The father's sorrows now began in earnest. The Indians broke his canoe
to pieces, having first hidden their own among the alder-bushes. As they
belonged to different bands and different villages, their mutual
jealousy now overcame all their prudence; and each proceeded to claim
his share of the captives and the booty. Happily, they made an amicable
distribution, or it would have fared ill with the three Frenchmen; and
each taking his share, not forgetting the priestly vestments of
Hennepin, the splendor of which they could not sufficiently admire, they
set out across the country for their villages, which lay towards the
north in the neighborhood of Lake Buade, now called Mille Lac.
[Sidenote: A HARD JOURNEY.]
Being, says Hennepin, exceedingly tall and active, they walked at a
prodigious speed, insomuch that no European could long keep pace with
them. Though the month of May had begun, there were frosts at night; and
the marshes and ponds were glazed with ice, which cut the missionary's
legs as he waded through. They swam the larger streams, and Hennepin
nearly perished with cold as he emerged from the icy current. His two
companions, who were smaller than he, and who could not swim, were
carried over on the backs of the Indians. They showed, however, no
little endurance; and he declares that he should have dropped by the
way, but for their support. Seeing him disposed to lag, the Indians, to
spur him on, set fire to the dry grass behind him, and then, taking him
by the hands, ran forward with him to escape the flames. To add to his
misery, he was nearly famished, as they gave him only a small piece of
smoked meat once a day, though it does not appear that they themselves
fared better. On the fifth day, being by this time in extremity, he saw
a crowd of squaws and children approaching over the prairie, and
presently descried the bark lodges of an Indian town. The goal was
reached. He was among the homes of the Sioux.
FOOTNOTES:
[197] _Description de la Louisiane, nouvellement découverte_, Paris,
1683.
[198] _Nouvelle Découverte d'un très grand Pays situé dans l'Amérique_,
Utrecht, 1697.
[199] _Nouvelle Découverte_, 248, 250, 251.
[200] See the preface of the Spanish translation by Don Sebastian
Fernandez de Medrano, 1699, and also the letter of Gravier, dated 1701,