France and England in North America, Part III: La Salle, Discovery of The Great West
Sioux of this region, was the fast friend of the three white men. He was
angry that they had been robbed, which he had been unable to prevent, as
the Sioux had no laws, and their chiefs little power; but he spoke his
mind freely, and told Aquipaguetin and the rest, in full council, that
they were like a dog who steals a piece of meat from a dish and runs
away with it. When Hennepin complained of hunger, the Indians had always
promised him that early in the summer he should go with them on a
buffalo hunt, and have food in abundance. The time at length came, and
the inhabitants of all the neighboring villages prepared for departure.
To each band was assigned its special hunting-ground, and he was
expected to accompany his Indian father. To this he demurred; for he
feared lest Aquipaguetin, angry at the words of the great chief, might
take this opportunity to revenge the insult put upon him. He therefore
gave out that he expected a party of "Spirits"--that is to say,
Frenchmen--to meet him at the mouth of the Wisconsin, bringing a supply
of goods for the Indians; and he declares that La Salle had in fact
promised to send traders to that place. Be this as it may, the Indians
believed him; and, true or false, the assertion, as will be seen,
answered the purpose for which it was made.
[Sidenote: CAMP OF SAVAGES.]
The Indians set out in a body to the number of two hundred and fifty
warriors, with their women and children. The three Frenchmen, who though
in different villages had occasionally met during the two months of
their captivity, were all of the party. They descended Rum River, which
forms the outlet of Mille Lac, and which is called the St. Francis by
Hennepin. None of the Indians had offered to give him passage; and,
fearing lest he should be abandoned, he stood on the bank, hailing the
passing canoes and begging to be taken in. Accau and Du Gay presently
appeared, paddling a small canoe which the Indians had given them; but
they would not listen to the missionary's call, and Accau, who had no
love for him, cried out that he had paddled him long enough already. Two
Indians, however, took pity on him, and brought him to the place of
encampment, where Du Gay tried to excuse himself for his conduct; but
Accau was sullen, and kept aloof.
After reaching the Mississippi, the whole party encamped together
opposite to the mouth of Rum River, pitching their tents of skin, or
building their bark-huts, on the slope of a hill by the side of the
water. It was a wild scene, this camp of savages among whom as yet no
traders had come and no handiwork of civilization had found its
way,--the tall warriors, some nearly naked, some wrapped in
buffalo-robes, and some in shirts of dressed deer-skin fringed with hair
and embroidered with dyed porcupine quills, war-clubs of stone in their
hands, and quivers at their backs filled with stone-headed arrows; the
squaws, cutting smoke-dried meat with knives of flint, and boiling it in
rude earthen pots of their own making, driving away, meanwhile, with
shrill cries, the troops of lean dogs, which disputed the meal with a
crew of hungry children. The whole camp, indeed, was threatened with
starvation. The three white men could get no food but unripe
berries,--from the effects of which Hennepin thinks they might all have
died, but for timely doses of his orvietan.
[Sidenote: FALLS OF ST. ANTHONY.]
Being tired of the Indians, he became anxious to set out for the
Wisconsin to find the party of Frenchmen, real or imaginary, who were to
meet him at that place. That he was permitted to do so was due to the
influence of the great chief Ouasicoudé, who always befriended him, and
who had soundly berated his two companions for refusing him a seat in
their canoe. Du Gay wished to go with him; but Accau, who liked the
Indian life as much as he disliked Hennepin, preferred to remain with
the hunters. A small birch-canoe was given to the two adventurers,
together with an earthen pot; and they had also between them a gun, a
knife, and a robe of beaver-skin. Thus equipped, they began their
journey, and soon approached the Falls of St. Anthony, so named by
Hennepin in honor of the inevitable Saint Anthony of Padua.[214] As they
were carrying their canoe by the cataract, they saw five or six Indians,
who had gone before, and one of whom had climbed into an oak-tree beside
the principal fall, whence in a loud and lamentable voice he was
haranguing the spirit of the waters, as a sacrifice to whom he had just
hung a robe of beaver-skin among the branches.[215] Their attention was
soon engrossed by another object. Looking over the edge of the cliff
which overhung the river below the falls, Hennepin saw a snake, which,
as he avers, was six feet long,[216] writhing upward towards the holes
of the swallows in the face of the precipice, in order to devour their
young. He pointed him out to Du Gay, and they pelted him with stones
till he fell into the river, but not before his contortions and the
darting of his forked tongue had so affected the Picard's imagination
that he was haunted that night with a terrific incubus.
[Sidenote: ADVENTURES.]
They paddled sixty leagues down the river in the heats of July, and
killed no large game but a single deer, the meat of which soon spoiled.
Their main resource was the turtles, whose shyness and watchfulness
caused them frequent disappointments and many involuntary fasts. They
once captured one of more than common size; and, as they were
endeavoring to cut off his head, he was near avenging himself by
snapping off Hennepin's finger. There was a herd of buffalo in sight on
the neighboring prairie; and Du Gay went with his gun in pursuit of
them, leaving the turtle in Hennepin's custody. Scarcely was he gone
when the friar, raising his eyes, saw that their canoe, which they had
left at the edge of the water, had floated out into the current. Hastily
turning the turtle on his back, he covered him with his habit of St.
Francis, on which, for greater security, he laid a number of stones, and
then, being a good swimmer, struck out in pursuit of the canoe, which
he at length overtook. Finding that it would overset if he tried to
climb into it, he pushed it before him to the shore, and then paddled
towards the place, at some distance above, where he had left the turtle.
He had no sooner reached it than he heard a strange sound, and beheld a
long file of buffalo--bulls, cows, and calves--entering the water not
far off, to cross to the western bank. Having no gun, as became his
apostolic vocation, he shouted to Du Gay, who presently appeared,
running in all haste, and they both paddled in pursuit of the game. Du
Gay aimed at a young cow, and shot her in the head. She fell in shallow
water near an island, where some of the herd had landed; and being
unable to drag her out, they waded into the water and butchered her
where she lay. It was forty-eight hours since they had tasted food.
Hennepin made a fire, while Du Gay cut up the meat. They feasted so
bountifully that they both fell ill, and were forced to remain two days
on the island, taking doses of orvietan, before they were able to resume
their journey.
Apparently they were not sufficiently versed in woodcraft to smoke the
meat of the cow; and the hot sun soon robbed them of it. They had a few
fishhooks, but were not always successful in the use of them. On one
occasion, being nearly famished, they set their line, and lay watching
it, uttering prayers in turn. Suddenly, there was a great turmoil in the
water. Du Gay ran to the line, and, with the help of Hennepin, drew in
two large cat-fish.[217] The eagles, or fish-hawks, now and then dropped
a newly caught fish, of which they gladly took possession; and once they
found a purveyor in an otter which they saw by the bank, devouring some
object of an appearance so wonderful that Du Gay cried out that he had a
devil between his paws. They scared him from his prey, which proved to
be a spade-fish, or, as Hennepin correctly describes it, a species of
sturgeon, with a bony projection from his snout in the shape of a
paddle. They broke their fast upon him, undeterred by this eccentric
appendage.
[Sidenote: THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI.]
If Hennepin had had an eye for scenery, he would have found in these his
vagabond rovings wherewith to console himself in some measure for his
frequent fasts. The young Mississippi, fresh from its northern springs,
unstained as yet by unhallowed union with the riotous Missouri, flowed
calmly on its way amid strange and unique beauties,--a wilderness,
clothed with velvet grass; forest-shadowed valleys; lofty heights, whose
smooth slopes seemed levelled with the scythe; domes and pinnacles,
ramparts and ruined towers, the work of no human hand. The canoe of the
voyagers, borne on the tranquil current, glided in the shade of gray
crags festooned with honeysuckles; by trees mantled with wild
grape-vines; dells bright with the flowers of the white euphorbia, the
blue gentian, and the purple balm; and matted forests, where the red
squirrels leaped and chattered. They passed the great cliff whence the
Indian maiden threw herself in her despair;[218] and Lake Pepin lay
before them, slumbering in the July sun,--the far-reaching sheets of
sparkling water, the woody slopes, the tower-like crags, the grassy
heights basking in sunlight or shadowed by the passing cloud; all the
fair outline of its graceful scenery, the finished and polished
master-work of Nature. And when at evening they made their bivouac fire
and drew up their canoe, while dim, sultry clouds veiled the west, and
the flashes of the silent heat-lightning gleamed on the leaden water,
they could listen, as they smoked their pipes, to the mournful cry of
the whippoorwills and the quavering scream of the owls.
Other thoughts than the study of the picturesque occupied the mind of
Hennepin when one day he saw his Indian father, Aquipaguetin, whom he
had supposed five hundred miles distant, descending the river with ten
warriors in canoes. He was eager to be the first to meet the traders,
who, as Hennepin had given out, were to come with their goods to the
mouth of the Wisconsin. The two travellers trembled for the
consequences of this encounter; but the chief, after a short colloquy,
passed on his way. In three days he returned in ill-humor, having found
no traders at the appointed spot. The Picard was absent at the time,
looking for game; and Hennepin was sitting under the shade of his
blanket, which he had stretched on forked sticks to protect him from the
sun, when he saw his adopted father approaching with a threatening look,
and a war-club in his hand. He attempted no violence, however, but
suffered his wrath to exhale in a severe scolding, after which he
resumed his course up the river with his warriors.
If Hennepin, as he avers, really expected a party of traders at the
Wisconsin, the course he now took is sufficiently explicable. If he did
not expect them, his obvious course was to rejoin Tonty on the Illinois,
for which he seems to have had no inclination; or to return to Canada by
way of the Wisconsin,--an attempt which involved the risk of starvation,
as the two travellers had but ten charges of powder left. Assuming,
then, his hope of the traders to have been real, he and Du Gay resolved,
in the mean time, to join a large body of Sioux hunters, who, as
Aquipaguetin had told them, were on a stream which he calls Bull River,
now the Chippeway, entering the Mississippi near Lake Pepin. By so
doing, they would gain a supply of food, and save themselves from the
danger of encountering parties of roving warriors.
[Sidenote: HE REJOINS THE INDIANS.]
They found this band, among whom was their companion Accau, and followed