The friar in his long gray capote or hooded garment, which fell to his feet, girt about the waist by a rope called the cord of St. Francis, stood, with bare toes showing on his sandals, inclining his fat head with sympathy. He took out his handkerchief and wiped the old men's faces. Du Gay and Ako, in spite of the peril, laughed to see him daub the war paint.
"The good father hath no suspicion that these old wretches are dooming him to death," said Ako to Du Gay.
It appeared afterwards that this was what the ceremony meant. For several days the Frenchmen, carried northward in their captors' boats, expected to die. No calumet was smoked with them; and every night one of the old chiefs, named Aquipaguetin, who had lost a son in war and formed a particular intention of taking somebody's scalp for solace, sat by the prisoners stroking them and howling by the hour. One night when the Frenchmen were forced to make their fire at the end of the camp, Aquipaguetin sent word that he meant to finish them without more delay. But they gave him some goods out of the store La Salle had sent with them, and he changed his mind and concluded to wait awhile. He carried the bones of one of his dead relations, dried and wrapped in skins gaily ornamented with porcupine-quill work; and it was his custom to lay these bones before the tribe and request that everybody blow smoke on them. Of the Frenchmen, however, he demanded hatchets, beads, and cloth. This cunning old Sioux wanted to get all he could before the party reached their villages, where the spoil would be divided.
Nineteen days after their capture the prisoners were brought to a place which is now the site of St. Paul in the state of Minnesota, where the Sioux disbanded, scattering to their separate towns. They had finally smoked the peace-pipe with the Frenchmen; and now, fortunately without disagreement, portioned their white captives and distributed the goods. Father Hennepin was given to Aquipaguetin, who promptly adopted him as a son. The Flemish friar saw with disgust his gold-embroidered vestments, which a missionary always carried with him for the impressive celebration of mass, displayed on savage backs and greatly admired.
The explorers were really in the way of seeing as much of the upper Mississippi as they could desire. They were far north of the Wisconsin's mouth, where white men first entered the great river. The young Mississippi, clear as a mountain stream, gathered many small tributaries. St. Peter's joined it from a blue-earth channel. This rugged northern world was wonderfully beautiful, with valleys and heights and rocks and waterfalls.
The Sioux were tall, well-made Indians, and so active that the smaller Frenchmen could hardly keep up with them on the march. They sometimes carried Du Gay and Ako over streams, but the robust friar they forced to wade or swim; and when he lagged lame-footed with exhaustion across the prairies, they set fire to grass behind him, obliging him to take to his heels with them or burn. By adoption into the family of Aquipaguetin he had a large relationship thrust upon him, for the old weeper had many wives and children and other kindred. Hennepin indeed felt that he was not needed and might at any time be disposed of. He never had that confidence in his father Aquipaguetin which a son should repose in a parent.
He was separated from Ako and Du Gay, who were taken to other villages. By the time he reached father Aquepaguetin's house he was so exhausted, and his legs, cut by ice in the streams, were so swollen that he fell down on a bear robe. The village was on an island in a sheet of water afterwards called Lake Buade. Hennepin was kindly received by his new family, who fed him as well as they were able, for the Sioux had little food when they were not hunting. Seeing him so feeble, they gave him an Indian sweating bath, which he found good for his health. They made a lodge of skins so tight that it would hold heat, and put into it stones baked to a white heat. On these they poured water and shut Hennepin in the steam until he sweated freely.
The Sioux had two kinds of lodges—one somewhat resembling those of the Illinois, the other a cone of poles with skins stretched around, called a tepee.
Father Hennepin did little missionary work among these Indians. He suffered much from hunger, being a man who loved good cheer. But the tribes went on a buffalo hunt in July and killed plenty of meat. All that northern world was then clothed in vivid verdure. Honeysuckles and wild grapevines made the woods fragrant. The gentian, which jealously closes its blue-fringed cup from the human eye, grew close to the lakes. Captive though the Frenchmen were, they could not help enjoying the evening camp-fire with its weird flickerings against the dark of savage forests, the heat-lightning which heralded or followed storms, the waters, clear, as if filtered through icebergs, dashing in foam over mossy rocks.
They met during the buffalo hunt, and it was about this time that some "spirits," or white men, were heard of, coming from Lake Superior. These proved to be the great ranger Greysolon du Lhut and four other Frenchmen.
This man, cousin to Tonty, passed nearly his whole life in the woods, going from Indian town to Indian town, or planting outposts of his own in the wilderness. Occasionally he went to France, and the king's magnificence at Versailles was endured by him until he could gain some desired point from the colonial minister and hurry back. The government relied on him to keep lawless coureurs de bois within bounds, and he traded with nearly all the western tribes. When Greysolon du Lhut appeared, the Sioux treated their prisoners with deference; and from that time Hennepin, Du Gay, and Ako went where they pleased.
They seemed to have had no thought of returning to Fort Crèvecœur. In those days when each man took his individual life in his hands and guarded it in ways which seemed best to him, it was often expedient to change one's plan of action. About the time that Tonty was obliged to abandon Fort Crèvecœur, Hennepin and his companions set off eastward with Greysolon du Lhut's party. Hennepin sailed for France as soon as he could and wrote a book about his adventures. It was one of La Salle's misfortunes that this friar should finally even lay claim to discovering the mouth of the Mississippi, adding the glory of that to these real adventures on its upper waters.
The first of March, La Salle, with a number of the men he had gathered, started from Fort Miamis to the Illinois country. The prairies were one dazzling expanse of snow, and as the party slid along on the broad, flat snowshoes to which their feet were strapped, some of them were so blinded that the pain in their eyes became unendurable. These were obliged to camp in the edge of some woods, while the rest went on.
La Salle himself was sitting in darkness while the spring sun struck a million sparkles from a world yet locked in winter. The wind chilled his back, and he spread his hands to the camp blaze. In the torment of snow-blindness he wondered whether Tonty was treading these white wastes, seeking him, or lying dead of Indian wounds under the snow crust. The talk of the other snow-blinded men, sitting about or stretched with their feet to the fire, was lost on his ear. Yet his one faithful servant, who went with him on all his journeys, could not see anything but calm fortitude on his face as he lifted it at the approach of snowshoes.
"I cannot see you, Hunaut," said La Salle. "Did you find some pine leaves?"
"I found some, monsieur."
"Steep them as soon as you can for the men's eyes."
"I wish to tell you, monsieur," the man said as he went about his task with a snow-filled kettle, "that I found also a party of Fox Indians from Green Bay, and they gave me news of Monsieur de Tonty."
Hunaut looked at the long, pale face of his master and saw the under lip tremble and twitch.
"You know I am much bound to Monsieur de Tonty. Is he alive?"
"He is alive, monsieur. He has been obliged to pass the winter at Green Bay. Father Hennepin has also passed through that country on his way to Montreal."
La Salle felt his troubles melt with the unlocking of winter. The brief but agonizing snow-blindness passed away with a thaw; and, overtaking his other men, he soon met the returning Illinois tribe and began the Indian settlement around the rock he intended to fortify.
Already the Miami tribe was following him, and he drew them into an alliance with the Illinois, impressively founding the principality soon to grow there. This eloquent Norman Frenchman had gifts in height and the large bone and sinew of Normandy, which his Indian allies always admired. And he well knew where to impress his talk with coats, shirts, guns, and hunting-knives. As his holdings of land in Canada were made his stepping-stones toward the west, so the footing he gained at Fort Miamis and in the Illinois country was to be used in discovering the real course of the Mississippi and taking possession of its vast basin.
It was the end of May before he met Tonty at St. Ignace; Italian and Frenchman coming together with outstretched arms and embracing. Tonty's black eyes were full of tears, but La Salle told his reverses as calmly as if they were another man's.
"Any one else," said Father Membré, who stood by, "would abandon the enterprise, but Monsieur de la Salle has no equal for constancy of purpose."
"But where is Father Ribourde?" La Salle inquired, missing the other Récollet.
Tonty told him sorrowfully how Father Ribourde had gone into the woods when his party camped, after being driven up river in a leaky boat by the Iroquois; how they had waited and searched for him, and were finally made aware that a band of prowling Kickapoos had murdered him.
Tonty had aimed at Green Bay by the Chicago portage, and tramped along the west shore of Lake Michigan, having found it impossible to patch the boat.
"We were nearly starved," he said; "but we found a few ears of corn and some frozen squashes in a deserted Indian town. When we reached the bay we found an old canoe and mended it; but as soon as we were on the water there rose a northwest wind with driving snow, which lasted nearly five days. We ate all our food, and, not knowing what to do, turned back to the deserted town to die by a warm fire in one of the wigwams. On the way the bay froze. We camped to make moccasins out of Father Membré's cloak. I was angry at Étienne Renault for not finishing his; but he excused himself on account of illness, having a great oppression of the stomach, caused by eating a piece of an Indian rawhide shield which he could not digest. His delay proved our salvation, for the next day, as I was urging him to finish the moccasins, a party of Ottawas saw the smoke of our fire and came to us. We gave them such a welcome as never was seen before. They took us into their canoes and carried us to an Indian village only two leagues off. All the Indians took pleasure in sending us food; so, after thirty-four days of starvation, we found our famine turned to abundance."
Tonty and La Salle, with their followers, paddled the thousand miles to Fort Frontenac, to make another start into the wilderness.
La Salle was now determined to keep his men together. He set down many of his experiences and thoughts in letters which have been kept; so we know at this day what was in the great explorer's mind, and how dear he held "Monsieur de Tonty, who is full of zeal."
On his return to the wilderness with another equipment, he went around the head of Lake Michigan and made the short Chicago portage to the Desplaines River. Entering by this branch the frozen Illinois, they dragged their canoes on sledges past the site of the town and reached open water below Peoria Lake. La Salle gave up the plan of building a ship, and determined to go on in his canoes to the mouth of the Mississippi.
So, pausing to hunt when game was needed, his company of fifty-four persons entered the great river, saw the Missouri rushing into it—muddy current and clear northern stream flowing alongside until the waters mingled. They met and overawed the Indians on both shores, building several stockades. The broad river seemed to fill a valley, doubling and winding upon itself with innumerable curves, in its solemn and lonely stretches. Huge pieces of low-lying bank crumbled and fell in with splashes, for the Mississippi ceaselessly eats away its own shore.
A hundred leagues below the mouth of the Arkansas they came to a swamp on the west side. Behind this swamp, they had been told, might be found the Arkansas tribe's great town. La Salle sent Tonty and Father Membré, with some voyageurs, to make friends with the Indians and bring him word about the town.
Tonty had seen nothing like it in the New World. The houses were large and square, of sun-baked brick, with a dome of canes overhead. The two largest were the chief's house and the temple. Doors were the only openings. Tonty and the friar were taken in where the chief sat on a bedstead with his squaws, and sixty old men, in white mulberry bark cloaks, squatted by with the dignity of a council. The wives, in order to honor the sovereign, yelled.
The temple was a place where dead chiefs' bones were kept. A mud wall built around it was ornamented with skulls. The inside was very rough. Something like an altar stood in the center of the floor; and a fire of logs was kept burning before it, and never allowed to go out, filling the place with smoke, and irritating the eyes of two old Indians who tended it in half darkness. The Frenchmen were not allowed to look into a secret place where the temple treasure was kept. But, hearing it consisted of pearls and trinkets, Tonty conjectured the Indians had got it from the Spanish. This tribe was not unlike the Aztecs of Mexico. The chief came in barbaric grandeur to visit La Salle, dressed in white, having fans carried before him, and a plate of burnished copper to represent the sun, for these lower Mississippians were sun-worshipers.
With gifts and the grave consideration which instantly won Indians, La Salle moved from tribe to tribe towards the Gulf. Red River pulsed upon the course like a discharging artery. The sluggish alligator woke from the ooze and poked up his snout at the canoes. "He is," says a quaint old writer who made that journey afterwards, "the most frightful master-fish that can be seen. I saw one that was as large as half a hogshead. There are some, they say, as large as a hogshead and twelve to fifteen feet long. I have no doubt they would swallow up a man if they caught him."
In April La Salle reached his goal. He found that the Mississippi divided its current into three strands and entered the Gulf through three mouths. He separated his party; La Salle took the west passage, and Tonty and another lieutenant the middle and the east. At the Gulf of Mexico they came together again, and with solemn ceremonies claimed for France all the country along the great river's entire length, and far eastward and westward, calling it Louisiana, in honor of King Louis XIV. A metal plate, bearing the arms of France, the king's name, and the date of the discovery, was fixed on a pillar in the shifting soil.
Hardy as he was, La Salle sometimes fell ill from the great exposures he endured. And more than once he was poisoned by some revengeful voyageur. It was not until the December following his discovery of the Mississippi's mouth that he realized his plan of fortifying the rock on the Illinois River. He and Tonty delighted in it, calling it Fort St. Louis of the Illinois. Storehouses and quarters for a garrison rose around its edges, protected by a palisade. A windlass was rigged to draw water from the river below. On the northeast corner of the rock a low earthwork remains to this day.
Around this natural castle the Indian tribes gathered to La Salle, as to a sovereign,—Miamis, Abenakis, and Shawanoes, from countries eastward, and the Illinois returned to spread over their beloved meadow. Instead of one town, many towns of log, or rush, or bark lodges could be seen from the summit of the Rock. Years afterwards the French still spoke of this fortress as Le Rocher. A little principality of twenty thousand inhabitants, strong enough to repel any attack of the Iroquois, thus helped to guard it. La Salle meant to supply his people with goods and give them a market for their furs. At this time he could almost see the success of his mighty enterprise assured; he could reasonably count on strengthening his stockades along the Mississippi, and on building near its mouth a city which would protect the entire west and give an outlet to the undeveloped wealth of the continent.
In the flush of his discovery and success La Salle went back to France, leaving Tonty in charge of the Rock and the gathering Indian nations, and laid his actual achievements before the king, asking for help. This was made necessary by the change in the colonial government, which had removed his friend Count Frontenac and left him at the mercy of enemies.
The king was not slow to see the capacity of this wonderful man, so shy of civilization that he lodged in a poor street, carrying with him the very breath of the wilderness. La Salle asked for two ships; the king gave him four; and many people and supplies were gathered to colonize and stock the west.
It was La Salle's intention to sail by way of the West Indies, cross the Gulf of Mexico, and enter the mouth of the Mississippi. But the Gulf of Mexico is rimmed with low marshy land, and he had never seen the mouth of the Mississippi from seaward. His unfamiliarity with the coast, or night, or fog cheated him of his destination, and the colony was landed four hundred miles west of it, in a place called Matagorda Bay, in Texas, which then belonged to the Spaniards. Although at the time of discovery he had taken the latitude of that exact spot where he set the post, he had been unable to determine the longitude; any lagoon might be an opening of the triple mouth he sought.
La Salle's brother, a priest, who sailed with him on this voyage, testified afterwards that the explorer died believing he was near the mouth of the Mississippi. Whatever may have been his thoughts, the undespairing Norman grappled with his troubles in the usual way. One of his vessels had been captured by the Spanish. Another had been wrecked in the bay by seamen who were willing to injure him. These contained supplies most needed for the colony. The third sailed away and left him; and his own little ship, a gift of the king for his use along the coast, was sunk by careless men while he was absent searching northward for the Mississippi.
Many of the colonists fell sick and died. Men turned sullen and tried to desert. Some went hunting and were never seen again. Indians, who dare not openly attack, skulked near and set the prairie on fire; and that was a sight of magnificence, the earth seeming to burn like a furnace, or, far as the eye could follow them, billows of flame rushing as across a fire sea. But La Salle was wise, and cut the grass close around his powder and camp.
Water, plains, trees combined endlessly, like the pieces of a kaleidoscope, to confuse him in his search. Tonty was not at hand to take care of the colony while he groped for the lost river. He moved his wretched people from their camp, with all goods saved off the wreck in the bay, to a better site for a temporary fort, on rising ground. The carpenters proved good for nothing. La Salle himself planned buildings and marked out mortises on the logs. First a large house roofed with hides, and divided into apartments, was finished to shelter all. Separate houses were afterwards built for the women and girls, and barracks or rougher cells for the men. A little chapel was finally added. And when high-pointed palisades surrounded the whole, La Salle, perhaps thinking of his invincible rock on the Illinois and the faithfulness of his copper-handed lieutenant guarding it, called this outpost also Fort St. Louis. Cannon were mounted at the four corners of the large house. As the balls were lost, they were loaded with bullets in bags.
Behind, the prairies stretched away to forests. In front rolled the bay, with the restless ever-heaving motion of the Mexican Gulf. A delicious salty air, like the breath of perpetual spring, blew in, tingling the skin of the sulkiest adventurer with delight in this virgin world. Fierce northers must beat upon the colonists, and the languors of summer must in time follow; and they were homesick, always watching for sails. Yet they had no lack of food. Oysters were so plentiful in the bay that they could not wade without cutting their feet with the shells. Though the alligator pushed his ugly snout and ridgy back out of lagoons, and horned frogs frightened the children, and the rattlesnake was to be avoided where it lay coiled in the grass, game of all kinds abounded. Every man was obliged to hunt, and every woman and child to help smoke the meat. Even the priests took guns in their hands. Father Membré had brought some buffalo traditions from the Illinois country. He was of Father Hennepin's opinion that this wild creature might be trained to draw the plow, and he had faith that benevolence was concealed behind its wicked eyes.
As Father Membré stalked along the prairie with the hunters, his capote tucked up out of his way on its cord, one of the men shot a buffalo and it dropped. The buffaloes rarely fell at once, even when wounded to death, unless hit in the spine. Father Membré approached it curiously.
"Come back, Father!" shouted the hunters.
Father Membré touched it gently with his gun.
"Run, Father, run!" cried the hunters.
"It is dead," asserted Father Membré. "I will rest my gun across its carcass to steady my aim at the other buffaloes."
He knelt to rest his gun across its back.
The great beast heaved convulsively to its feet and made a dash at the Récollet. It sent him revolving heels over head. But Father Membré got up, and, spreading his capote in both hands, danced in front of the buffalo to head it off from escaping. At that, with a bellow, the shaggy creature charged over him across the prairie, dropping to its knees and dying before the frightened hunters could lift the friar from the ground.
"Are you hurt, Father?" they all asked, supporting him, and finding it impossible to keep from laughing as he sat up, with his reverend face skinned and his capote nearly torn off.
"Not unto death," responded Father Membré, brushing grass and dirty hoof prints from his garment. "But it hath been greatly impressed on my mind that this ox-savage is no fit beast for the plow. Nor will I longer counsel our women to coax the wild cows to a milking. It is well to adapt to our needs the beasts of a country," said Father Membré, wiping blood from his face. "But this buffalo creature hath disappointed me!"
La Salle was prostrated through the month of November. But by Christmas he was able to set out on a final search from which he did not intend to return until he found the Mississippi. All hands in the fort were busied on the outfit necessary for the party. Clothes were made of sails recovered from one of the wrecked vessels. Eighteen men were to follow La Salle, among them his elder brother, the Abbé Cavelier. Some had on the remains of garments they had worn in France, and others were dressed in deer or buffalo skins. He had bought five horses of the Indians to carry the baggage.
At midnight on Christmas Eve everybody crowded into the small fortress chapel. The priests, celebrating mass, moved before the altar in such gold-embroidered vestments as they had, and the light of torches illuminated the rough log walls. Those who were to stay and keep the outpost, literally lost in the wilderness, were on their knees weeping. Those who were to go knelt also, with the dread of an awful uncertainty in their minds. The faithful ones foresaw worse than peril from forests and waters and savages, for La Salle could not leave behind all the villains with whom he was obliged to serve himself. He alone showed the composure of a man who never despairs. If he had positively known that he was setting out upon a fatal journey,—that he was undertaking his last march through the wilderness,—the mass lights would still have shown the firm face of a man who did not turn back from any enterprise. The very existence of these people who had come out to the New World with him depended on his success. Whatever lay in the road he had to encounter it. The most splendid lives may progress and end through what we call tragedy; but it is better to die in the very stress of achievement than to stretch a poor existence through a century. The contagion of his hardihood stole out like the Christmas incense and spread through the chapel.
"It was the establishment of military posts throughout this vast valley that eventually brought on a life struggle between the English and the French," says a historian.
At first the only spot of civilization in boundless wilderness was Tonty's little fort on the Illinois. Protected by it, the Indians went hunting and brought in buffalo skins and meat; their women planted and reaped maize; children were born; days came and went; autumn haze made the distances pearly; winter snow lay on the wigwams; men ran on snowshoes; and papooses shouted on the frozen river. Still no news came from La Salle.
Tonty had made a journey to the mouth of the Mississippi to meet him, after he landed with his colony, searching thirty leagues in each direction along the coast. La Salle was at that time groping through a maze of lagoons in Texas. Tonty, with his men, waded swamps to their necks, enduring more suffering than he had ever endured in his life before. This was in February of the year 1686. Finding it impossible to reach La Salle, who must be wandering somewhere on the Gulf of Mexico, Tonty wrote a letter to him, intrusting it to the hands of an Indian chief, with directions that it be delivered when the explorer appeared. He also left a couple of men who were willing to wait in the Arkansas villages to meet La Salle.
Two years passed before those men brought positive proof of the undespairing Norman's fate. The remnant of the party that started with La Salle from Fort St. Louis of Texas spent one winter at Fort St. Louis of the Illinois, bringing word that they had left their leader in good health on the coast. The Abbé Cavelier even collected furs in his brother's name, and went on to France, carrying his secret with him.
La Salle had been assassinated on the Trinity River, soon after setting out on his last determined search for the Mississippi. The eighteenth day of March, 1687, some of his brutal voyageurs hid themselves in bushes and shot him.
So slowly did events move then, and so powerless was man, an atom in the wilderness, that the great-hearted Italian, weeping aloud in rage and grief, realized that La Salle's bones had been bleaching a year and a half before the news of his death reached his lieutenant. It was not known that La Salle received burial. The wretches who assassinated him threw him into some brush. It was a satisfaction to Tonty that they all perished miserably afterwards; those who survived quarrels among themselves being killed by the Indians.
The undespairing Norman died instantly, without feeling or admitting defeat. And he was not defeated. Though his colony—including Father Membré, who had been so long with him—perished by the hands of the Indians in Texas, in spite of Tonty's second journey to relieve them, his plan of settlements from the great lakes to the mouth of the Mississippi became a reality.
Down from Canada came two of the eleven Le Moyne brothers, D'Iberville and Bienville, fine fighting sons of a powerful colonial family, with royal permission to found near the great river's mouth that city which had been La Salle's dream. Fourteen years after La Salle's death, while D'Iberville was exploring for a site, the old chief, to whom Tonty had given a letter for La Salle, brought it carefully wrapped and delivered it into the hands of La Salle's more fortunate successor.
Tonty was associated with Le Moyne D'Iberville in these labors around the Gulf.
A long peninsula betwixt the Mississippi and Kaskaskia Rivers, known since as the American Bottom, lured away Indians from the great town on the Illinois. The new settlement founded on this peninsula was called Kaskaskia, for one of the tribes. As other posts sprung into existence, Fort St. Louis was less needed. "As early as 1712," we are told, "land titles were issued for a common field in Kaskaskia. Traders had already opened a commerce in skins and furs with the remote post of Isle Dauphine in Mobile Bay." Settlements were firmly established. By 1720 the luxuries of Europe came into the great tract taken by La Salle in the name of King Louis and called Louisiana.
Twelve years after La Salle's death a missionary named St. Cosme (Sant' Come) journeyed from Canada in a party guided by Tonty. St. Cosme has left this record of the man with the copper hand:—
"He guided us as far as the Arkansas and gave us much pleasure on the way, winning friendship of some savages and intimidating others who from jealousy or desire to plunder opposed the voyage; not only doing the duty of a brave man but that of a missionary. He quieted the voyageurs, by whom he was generally loved, and supported us by his example in devotion."
On the Chicago portage a little boy, given to the missionary perhaps because he was an orphan and the western country offered him the best chances in life, started eagerly ahead, though he was told to wait. The rest of the party, having goods and canoes to carry from the Chicago River to the Desplaines, lost sight of him, and he was never seen again. Autumn grass grew tall over the marshy portage, but they dared not set it afire, though his fate was doubtless hidden in that grass. The party divided and searched for him, calling and firing guns. Three days they searched, and daring to wait no longer, for it was November and the river ready to glaze with ice, they left him to some French people at the post of Chicago. But the child was not found. He disappeared and no one ever knew what became of him.
Like this is Henri de Tonty's disappearance from history. The records show him working with Le Moyne D'Iberville and Le Moyne de Bienville to found New Orleans and Mobile, pushing the enterprises which La Salle had begun. He has been blamed with the misbehavior of a relative of his, Alphonse de Tonty, who got into disgrace at the post of Detroit. Little justice has been done to the memory of this man, who should not be forgotten in the west. So quietly did he slip out of life that his burial place is unknown. Some people believe that he came back to the Rock long after its buildings were dismantled and it had ceased to be Fort St. Louis of the Illinois. Others say he died in Mobile. But it is probable that both La Salle and Tonty left their bodies to the wilderness which their invincible spirits had conquered.
After the settlement of Kaskaskia a strong fortress was built sixteen miles above, on the same side of the Mississippi. The king of France spent a million crowns strengthening this place, which was called Fort Chartres. Its massive walls, inclosing four acres, and its buildings and arched gateway were like some medieval stronghold strangely transplanted from the Old World. White uniformed troops paraded. A village sprang up around it. Fort Chartres was the center of government until Kaskaskia became the first capital of the Illinois territory. Applications for land had to be made at this post. Indians on the Mississippi, for it was a little distance from the shore, heard drumbeat and sunset gun, and were proud of going in and out of its mighty gateway under the white flag of France.
Other villages began on the eastern bank of the river—Cahokia, opposite the present city of St. Louis, and Prairie du Rocher, nearer Kaskaskia. Ste. Genevieve also was built in what is now the state of Missouri, on land which then was claimed by the Spaniards. There was a Post of Natchitoches on the Red River, as well as a Post of Washita on the Washita River. Settlements were also founded upon La Fourche and Fausse Rivière above New Orleans.
"The finest country we have seen," wrote one of the adventurers in those days, "is all from Chicago to the Tamaroas. It is nothing but prairie and clumps of wood as far as you can see. The Tamaroas are eight leagues from the Illinois." Chicago was a landing place and portage from the great lakes long before a stockade with a blockhouse was built called Fort Dearborn.
"Monjolly," wrote the same adventurer, "or Mount Jolliet, is a mound of earth on the prairie on the right side of the Illinois River as you go down, elevated about thirty feet. The Indians say at the time of the great deluge one of their ancestors escaped, and this little mountain is his canoe which he turned over there."
La Salle had learned from the Iroquois about the Ohio River. But the region through which it flowed to the Mississippi remained for a long while an unbroken wilderness. The English settlements on their strip of Atlantic coast, however, and the French settlements in the west, reached gradually out over this territory and met and grappled. Whichever power got and kept the mastery of the west would get the mastery of the continent.
The territory of Kentucky, like that of Michigan, was owned by no tribe of Indians. "It was the common hunting and fighting ground of Ohio tribes on the north and Cherokees and Chickasaws on the south."
There was indeed one exception to the uninhabited state of all that land stretching betwixt the Alleghanies and the Mississippi. Vincennes, now a town of Indiana, was, after Kaskaskia, the oldest place in the west. This isolated post is said to have been founded by French soldiers and emigrants. Five thousand acres were devoted to the common field. De Vincennes, for whom it was named, was a nephew of Louis Jolliet. And while it is not at all certain that he founded the post, he doubtless sojourned there in the Indiana country during his roving life. A small stockade on the site of the town of Fort Wayne is said to have been built by him.
French settlements began to extend southward from Lake Erie to the head waters of the Ohio, like a chain to check the English. Presqu' Isle, now Erie, Pennsylvania, was founded about the same time as Vincennes.
A French settler built his house in an inclosure of two or three acres. The unvarying model was one story high, with porches or galleries surrounding it. Wooden walls were filled and daubed with a solid mass of what was called cat-and-clay, a mixture of mortar and chopped straw or Spanish moss. The chimney was of the same materials, shaped by four long corner posts, wide apart below, and nearer together at the top.
As fast as children grew up and married they built their cottages in their father's yard; and so it went on, until with children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, a small village accumulated around one old couple.
The French were not anxious to obtain grants of the rich wild land. Every settlement had its common field, large or small, as was desired. A portion of this field was given to each person in the village for his own, and he was obliged to cultivate it and raise food for his family. If a man neglected his ground, it was taken from him. A large tract of land called the common pasture was also inclosed for everybody's cattle to graze in.
Sometimes houses were set facing one court, or center, like a camp, for defense. But generally the French had little trouble with their savage neighbors, who took very kindly to them. The story of western settlement is not that dreadful story of continual wars with Indians which reddens the pages of eastern colonies. The French were gay people. They loved to dance and hunt and spend their time in amusements. While the serious, stubborn English were grubbing out the foundations of great states on the Atlantic coast, it must be confessed these happy folks cared little about developing the rich Mississippi valley.
During all its early occupation this hospitable land abounded with game. Though in November the buffaloes became so lean that only their tongues were eaten, swans, geese, and ducks were always plentiful, and the fish could not be exhausted.
On a day in February, people from Kaskaskia hurried over the road which then stretched a league to the Mississippi, for the town was on the Kaskaskia River bank. There were settlers in blanket capotes, shaped like friars' frocks, with hoods to draw over their heads. If it had been June instead of February, a blue or red kerchief would have covered the men's heads. The dress of an ordinary frontiersman in those days consisted of shirt, breech-cloth, and buckskin leggins, with moccasins, and neips, or strips of blanket wrapped around the feet for stockings. The voyageur so equipped could undertake any hardship. But in the settlements wooden shoes were worn instead of moccasins, and garments of texture lighter than buckskin. The women wore short gowns, or long, full jackets, and petticoats; and their moccasins were like those of squaws, ornamented with beautiful quill-work. Their outer wraps were not unlike the men's; so a multitude of blanket capotes flocked toward the Mississippi bank, which at that time had not been washed away, and rose steeply above the water. They had all run to see a procession of boats pass by from Fort Chartres.
A little negro had brought the news that the boats were in sight. Black slaves were owned by some of the French; and Indian slaves, sold by their captors to the settlers, had long been members of these patriarchal households. Many of them had left their work to follow their masters to the river; the negroes pointing and shouting, the Indians standing motionless and silent.
The sun flecked a broad expanse of water, and down this shining track rushed a fleet of canoes; white uniforms leading, and brick-colored heads above dusky-fringed buckskins following close after. This little army waved their hands and fired guns to salute the crowd on shore. The crowd all jangled voices in excited talk, no man listening to what another said.
"See you—there are Monsieur Pierre D'Artaguette and the Chevalier De Vincennes and excellent Father Senat in the first boat."
"The young St. Ange and Sieur Lalande follow them."
"How many of our good Indians have thrown themselves into this expedition! The Chickasaw nation may howl when they see this array! They will be taught to leave the boats from New Orleans alone!"
"But suppose Sieur De Bienville and his army do not meet the Commandant D'Artaguette when he reaches the Chickasaw country?"
"During his two years at Fort Chartres has Sieur D'Artaguette made mistakes? The expedition will succeed."
"The saints keep that beautiful boy!—for to look at him, though he is so hardy, Monsieur Pierre D'Artaguette is as handsome as a woman. I have heard the southern tribes sacrifice their own children to the sun. This is a fair company of Christians to venture against such devils."
The Chickasaws, occupying a tract of country now stretching across northern Mississippi and western Tennessee, were friendly to the English and willing to encroach on the French. They interrupted river traffic and practiced every cruelty on their prisoners. D'Artaguette knew as well as the early explorers that in dealing with savages it is a fatal policy to overlook or excuse their ill-behavior. They themselves believed in exact revenge, and despised a foe who did not strike back, their insolence becoming boundless if not curbed. So he had planned with Le Moyne de Bienville a concerted attack on these allies of the English. Bienville, bringing troops up river from New Orleans, was to meet him in the Chickasaw country on a day and spot carefully specified.