Let us picture in imagination the history of the Great Valley of the Mississippi as a splendid drama enacted upon a giant stage which reaches from the Alleghanies to the Rockies and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and through which the Father of Waters sweeps majestically. Let us people this stage with real men and women—picturesque red men and no less interesting white men, Indians, Spaniards, Frenchmen, Englishmen, explorers, warriors, priests, voyageurs, coureurs de bois; fur traders, and settlers. Let the scenes be set about the lakes, along the rivers, among the hills, on the plains, and in the forests. Then, viewing this pageant of the past, let us write the true tales of the Great Valley as we write romance—with life, action, and color—that the history of our Great Valley may live.

The purpose of this book is to present in readable narrative form, yet with strict accuracy, some of the events which attended the coming of the French explorers into the Mississippi Valley, and to deal with these events as much as possible from the standpoint of the Indians whose country the white men entered. In other words, an effort has been made to place the reader in the position and environment of the native inhabitants in order that he may witness the coming of the whites through the eyes and minds of the Indians instead of viewing from the outside the exploration, by men of his own kind, of an unknown land peopled by a strange and vaguely understood race.

For the sake of preserving the standpoint of the Great Valley, the story of explorations is centered about Henry de Tonty—the “Man with the Iron Hand”—who, unlike his leader La Salle, remained in the valley of the Mississippi and in close relations with its inhabitants for a quarter of a century.

This book is not in any sense fiction. It has been written directly from the original sources and from the best information available upon the life of the Indian at the time of the arrival of the whites. The sources consist mainly of the letters and relations of Father Marquette and other Jesuits, of Joliet and La Salle and Tonty, and the writings of the various friars, priests, and soldiers who accompanied them. A few fragments are accessible in manuscript form only; but the most important material has been compiled, edited, and published by Pierre Margry, John Gilmary Shea, B. F. French, Reuben Gold Thwaites, and others.

Where conversations are given they have been taken from the reports of those who held them or heard them. Usually they have been translated literally from the French records. Sometimes the direct discourse has been turned into indirect, or abridged, and in a few cases the indirect has been turned into the direct form.

The writings of the early explorers and priests abound in descriptive details of a climatic, physical, or personal nature; and this information, wherever illuminative, has been drawn upon to reproduce as vividly and as truly as possible the conditions surrounding the events described.

There is one secondary writer who will always deserve the gratitude of the student of subjects connected with the French and Indians in Canada and the Mississippi Valley, and acknowledgments are here made to Francis Parkman, not as a source of information—although his conclusions, drawn from an exhaustive study of original documents, are invaluable—but as a pioneer and unrivaled master in the field and a source of unfailing inspiration.

There are many persons who have aided the work in various ways, and their assistance has been duly appreciated; but space will permit the mention of only two of them. The helpful criticism and suggestions of my wife throughout the entire preparation of the volume have materially benefited the text; and the constant advice and encouragement of the editor of the series, Dr. Benjamin F. Shambaugh, and his careful editorial revision of the manuscript have added much to the value of the book.

Denver, Colorado

A sudden, far-off cry broke the stillness that had brooded over the long, low Indian lodges on the hill. Instantly the whole village awoke to intense excitement. Women dropped their work by the fireside; old men put away their long-stemmed pipes and leaped like young braves to the doors of the lodges; while in the fields young girls stood straight to listen. Again came the cry, but nearer now and as of many voices. From every lodge by the side of the river and on the hill came pouring the red-skinned villagers, their straight, black hair glistening in the sunlight. From the fields of corn and squashes and out from among the bean-vines came lithe maidens and sturdy Indian women; and from their play by the riverside naked children tumbled breathlessly into the open space before the lodges.

In the distance, with wild, triumphant cries, came the war party for which the women and old men of the village had waited so long. Now they could see the gay feathers that decorated the heads and the red paint that smeared the bodies of the returning braves. Now they caught sight of scalp-locks waved in the air; and in the midst of the throng of warriors they saw the figure of a strange Indian lad plodding along between two tall braves. “Scalps and a captive” went up the cry from the waiting villagers, and out into the open with shouts of welcome they poured to meet the home-coming band.

It was an occasion long to be remembered. The women of the tribe gathered in the open, and with weird songs and wild music, with arms flung high and feet shuffling and leaping, and with bodies twisting and bending, danced the scalp dance.

The captive was only a boy, who did not speak the language of the Illinois into whose triumphant hands he had fallen. He was a stranger in the midst of enemies. Sometimes, as he well knew, in the camps of the Peoria tribe, when darkness had fallen after a day of battle, captives were burned alive. Such a scene his terrified mind now pictured. He imagined himself bound at the foot of a stake in the midst of a clearing. He could see flames reach out hungrily and consume the dried sticks and underbrush. Each second they mounted higher, throwing a circle of light on a close-packed crowd of heartless and rejoicing Indians, who watched the growing flames leap up and lick at the limbs of the helpless captive tied to the stake.

Perhaps, if he had been an Iroquois, burning would have been the young boy’s fate. But on this particular occasion the Iowa River, which ran past the Peoria village, witnessed no such barbaric torturings, for the wife of the chief claimed the captive and took him to her own lodge, where in due time and with proper ceremony he was adopted as a member of the chief’s family.

It was in some such train of events that this captive Indian boy came, with strange words upon his lips and fear in his heart, to live with the Peoria tribe of Illinois Indians. He had many forebodings, but with all his Indian imagination he could not foresee that from this village of his adoption he would set out upon a series of adventures such as no boy or man of his tribe had yet experienced—that he would pass through countries and among people like none he had ever known and come upon dangers that would make his capture in battle seem as tame as a day’s fishing.