They made quick work. The shriek of a helpless mother or the scream of a frightened infant was quickly hushed in death. When, however, the first fury of butchery had spent itself, Menendez ordered that such persons should be spared, and fifty were actually saved alive. Every male above the age of fifteen was, from first to last, killed on the spot.

Laudonniere had leaped from his sick-bed and, in his night-shirt, rallied a few men for resistance. But they were quickly killed or dispersed, and he escaped to the woods, where a few half-naked fugitives were gathered. Some of these determined to go back and appeal to the humanity of the Spaniards. The mercy of wolves to lambs! Seeing these poor wretches butchered, the others felt that their only hope was in making their way to the mouth of the river, where lay two or three light craft which Ribaut had left. {94} Wading through mire and water, their naked limbs cut by the sedge and their feet by roots, they met two or three small boats sent to look out for fugitives, and were taken aboard half dead.

After two or three days of vain waiting for the reappearance of the armed ships, the little flotilla sailed for France, carrying Laudonniere and the other fugitives, some of whom died on the voyage from wounds and exposure.

The Spaniards had Fort Caroline, with one hundred and forty-two dead heretics heaped about it and a splendid booty in armor, clothing, and provisions—all the supplies lately brought by Ribaut from France. Everybody has read how Menendez hanged his few prisoners on trees, with the legend over them, "I do this not as to Frenchmen, but to Lutherans."

Meanwhile Ribaut and his ships had been blown down the coast, vainly struggling to keep away from the reefs, and were finally wrecked, one after another, at various distances to the south of St. Augustine.

Let us pass quickly over the remainder of this sickening story. One day, after Menendez had returned to St. Augustine, Indians came in, breathless, {95} with tidings that the crew of a wrecked vessel, struggling northward, had reached an arm of the sea (Matanzas Inlet), which they had no means of crossing. Immediately Menendez started out with about sixty men in boats and met them.

The starving Frenchmen, deceived by his apparent humanity in setting breakfast before them, surrendered, and, having been ferried over the inlet in small batches, were led back into the sand-hills and butchered.

About two weeks later word was brought to Menendez of a second and larger party of Frenchmen who had reached the same fatal spot. Ribaut himself was among them. Not knowing of the horrible fate of his countrymen, he tried to make terms with the Spaniards. While he was parleying with Menendez, two hundred of his followers marched away, declaring that they would rather take chances with the Indians than with these white men whom they distrusted.

Ribaut, having surrendered with the remaining hundred and fifty, was led away behind the sandhills and his hands were tied. Then he knew that he had been duped, and calmly faced his doom. "We are of earth," he said, "and to earth must return! Twenty years more or less matter little."

{96}

As before, the deluded Frenchmen were brought over in tens, led away, tied, and, at a given signal, butchered.

Some twenty days later, Menendez received tidings of a third band of Frenchmen, far to the southward, near Cape Canaveral. This was the party that had refused to surrender with Ribaut. When he reached the place, he saw that they had reared a kind of stockade and were trying to build a vessel out of the timbers of their wrecked ship. He sent a messenger to summon them to surrender, pledging his honor for their safety. Part preferred to take the chance of being eaten by Indians, they said, and they actually fled to the native villages. The rest took Menendez at his word and surrendered, and they had no reason to regret it. He took them to St. Augustine and treated them well. Some of them rewarded the pious efforts of the priests by turning Catholics. The rest were no doubt sent to the galleys.

Everybody is familiar with the story of the vengeance taken by Dominique de Gourgues, a Gascon gentleman. Seeing the French court too supine to insist upon redress, he sold his estate, with the proceeds equipped and manned three small vessels, sailed to the coast of Florida and, {97} with the assistance of several hundred Indians, who hated the cruel Spaniards, captured Fort Caroline, slaughtered the garrison, hanged the prisoners, and put up over the scene of two butcheries the legend, "Not as to Spaniards, but as to traitors, robbers, and murderers."

Thus closed the last bloody act in the tragedy of French colonization in Carolina and Florida. A long period—one hundred and thirty-four years—was to pass before the French flag would again fly within the territory now embraced in the Southern States.



[1] In "Pioneer Spaniards in North America," p. 79, it has been mentioned that when Ponce de Leon fancied that he heard among the Indians of Porto Rico a story of a fountain having the property of giving immortality, this was because he had in his mind a legend that had long been current in Europe. Sir John Maundeville went so far as to say that he had visited these famous waters in Asia and had bathed in them. The legend was, however, much older than Maundeville's time. In the "Romance of Alexander the Great," which was very popular hundreds of years ago, it is related that Alexander's cook, on one of his marches, took a salt fish to a spring to wash it before cooking it. No sooner was the fish put into the water than it swam away. The cook secured a bottle of the magic water, but concealed his knowledge. Later he divulged his secret to Alexander's daughter, who thereupon married him. Alexander, when he learned the facts, was furious. He changed his daughter into a sea-nymph and his cook into a sea-monster. Being immortal, undoubtedly they are still disporting themselves in the Indian Ocean. For this story the writer is indebted to Professor George F. Moore, D.D., of the Harvard Divinity School.



{101}

Chapter VIII

SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN IN NOVA SCOTIA

How the Cod-fishery led to the Fur-trade.—Disastrous Failure of the First Trading-posts.—Champlain's First Visit to the New World.—His Second, and the Determination to which it led.—The Bitter Winter at St. Croix.—Champlain's First Voyage down the New England Coast.—Removal to Port Royal.—Abandonment of Port Royal.

The disasters in Florida did not abate the activity of Frenchmen on the far northern coast of America.

The earliest attraction was the cod-fishery. Then, as the fishing-folk grew familiar with Newfoundland and the continental shores, their attention was drawn to the skins worn by the natives. What prices they would bring in France! Here was a field that would make richer returns than rough and perilous fishing. In this way the fur-trade, which became the life of Canada, had its beginning.

The first chapters of the story were gloomy and disheartening beyond description. The dreadful scurvy and the cruel cold scourged the newcomers. Party after party perished {102} miserably. The story of one of these is singularly romantic. When Sable Island[1] was reached, its leader, the Marquis de la Roche, landed forty ragamuffins, while he sailed on with the best men of his crew to examine the coast and choose a site for the capital of his promising domain.

Alas! he never returned. A gale swept his little craft out to sea and drove him back to France.

When he landed, the sun of his prosperity had set. Creditors swooped down upon him, political enemies rose in troops, and the "Lieutenant-General of Canada and the adjacent countries" was clapped in jail like a common malefactor. Meanwhile what of the forty promising colonists on Sable Island? They dropped for years out of human knowledge as completely as Henry Hudson when dastardly mutineers set him adrift in an open boat in the bay which bears his name,[2] or Narvaez and his brilliant expedition whose fate was a mystery until the appearance of four survivors, eight years afterward.[3]

{103}

Five years went by, and twelve uncouth creatures stood before Henry the Fourth, clad in shaggy skins, and with long, unkempt beards. They were the remnant of La Roche's jailbirds. He had at last gained a hearing from the King, and a vessel had been sent to Sable Island to bring home the survivors of his party. What a story they told! When months passed, and La Roche came not, they thought they were left to their fate. They built huts of the timbers of a wreck which lay on the beach—for there was not a tree on the island—and so faced the dreary winter. With trapping foxes, spearing seals, and hunting wild cattle, descendants of some which a certain Baron de Lery had left eight years before, they managed to eke out existence, not without quarrels and murders among themselves. At last the remnant was taken off by the vessel which Henry sent for them.

Shaggy and uncouth as they looked, they had a small fortune in the furs which they had accumulated. This wealth had not escaped the notice of the thrifty skipper who brought them home, and he had robbed them. But the King not only compelled the dishonest sea-captain to disgorge his plunder, but aided {104} its owners with a pension in setting up in the fur-trade.

Such dismal experiences filled more than fifty years of futile effort to colonize New France. Cold and scurvy as effectually closed the North to Frenchmen as Spanish savagery the South.

Then, in this disheartening state of affairs, appeared the man who well deserves the title of the "Father of New France," since his courage and indomitable will steered the tiny "ship of state" through a sea of discouragements.

Samuel de Champlain was born in 1567 at the small French seaport of Brouage, on the Bay of Biscay. In his pious devotion and his unquestioning loyalty to the Church, he was of the "Age of Faith," and he recalls Columbus. In his eager thirst for knowledge and his daring spirit of exploration, he was a modern man, while his practical ability in handling men and affairs reminds us of the doughty Captain John Smith, of Virginia. He came to manhood in time to take part in the great religious wars in France. After the conflict was ended, when his master, Henry the Great, was seated on the throne, Champlain's adventurous spirit led him to the West Indies. Since these were closed to Frenchmen by the jealousy {105} of the Spaniards, there was a degree of peril in the undertaking which for him was its chief charm. After two years he returned, bringing a journal in which he had set down the most notable things seen in Spanish America. It was illustrated with a number of the quaintest pictures, drawn and colored by himself. He also visited Mexico and Central America. His natural sagacity is shown in his suggesting, even at that early day, that a ship-canal across the Isthmus of Panama would effect a vast saving.



In 1603, in two quaint little vessels, not larger than the fishing craft of to-day, Champlain and Pontgrave, who was interested in the fur-trade, crossed the Atlantic and sailed up the St. Lawrence. When they came to Hochelaga, on the site of Montreal, they found there only a few shiftless and roving Algonquins.[4]

The explorers passed on and boldly essayed, but in vain, to ascend the rapids of St. Louis. When they sailed for France, however, a great purpose was formed in Champlain's mind. What {106} he had gathered from the Indians as to the great waters above, the vast chain of rivers and lakes, determined the scene of his future activity.

His next venture in the New World was made in association with the Sieur de Monts, a Huguenot gentleman, who had obtained leave to plant a colony in Acadia (Nova Scotia). With a band of colonists—if we can apply that name to a motley assemblage of jailbirds and high-born gentlemen, of Catholic priests and Protestant ministers—they sailed for America in 1604.

Thirty years of bloody warfare in France had but recently come to an end, and the followers of the two faiths were still full of bitter hatred. It is easy, therefore, to believe Champlain's report that monk and minister quarreled incessantly and sometimes came to blows over religious questions.

This state of feeling came near to causing the death of an innocent man. After the New World had been reached, and when the expedition was coasting along the eastern shore of the Bay of Fundy, seeking a place for a settlement, one day a party went ashore to stroll in the woods. On reassembling, a priest named Nicolas Aubry was missing. Trumpets were sounded and cannon fired from the ships. All in vain. There {107} was no reply but the echo of the ancient forest. Then suspicion fell upon a certain Huguenot with whom Aubry had often quarreled. He was accused of having killed the missing priest. In spite of his strenuous denial of the charge, many persons firmly believed him guilty. Thus matters stood for more than two weeks. One day, however, the crew of a boat that had been sent back to the neighborhood where the priest had disappeared heard a strange sound and saw a small black object in motion on the shore. Rowing nearer, they descried a man waving a hat on a stick. Imagine their surprise and joy when they recognized Aubry! He had become separated from his comrades, had lost his way, and for sixteen days of misery and terror had kept himself alive on berries and wild fruits.

The place finally selected for settlement was a dreary island near the mouth of the St. Croix River, which now forms the boundary between Maine and New Brunswick. It had but one recommendation, namely, that it was admirably suited for defence, and these Frenchmen, reared in war-time, seem to have thought more of that single advantage than of the far more pressing needs of a colony. Cannon were landed, a {108} battery was built, and a fort was erected. Then buildings quickly followed, and by the autumn the whole party was well housed in its settlement, called Sainte Croix (Holy Cross). The river they named differently, but it has since borne the title of that ill-starred colony.

When winter came, the island, exposed to the fierce winds blowing down the river, was fearfully cold. Ice floated by in great masses, frequently cutting off the settlers from the mainland and from their supplies of wood and water. The terror of those days, the scurvy, soon appeared, and by the spring nearly half of the seventy-nine men lay in the little cemetery. Of the survivors the greater number had no other desire than to flee from the scene of so much misery. They were cheered, however, when Pontgrave arrived from France with supplies and forty new men.

In the hope of securing a more favorable site in a warmer latitude, Champlain, who already had explored a part of the coast and had visited and named the island of Mount Desert, set out in a small vessel with Monts and about thirty men on a voyage of discovery. They followed the shores of Maine closely, and by the middle of July were off Cape Ann. Then they entered {109} Massachusetts Bay. The islands of Boston Harbor, now so bare, Champlain describes as covered with trees. The aboriginal inhabitants of the region seem to have felt a friendly interest in the distinguished strangers. Canoe-loads of them came out to gaze on the strange spectacle of the little vessel, with its bearded and steel-clad crew.

Down the South Shore the voyagers held their way, anchoring for the night near Brant Rock. A head wind drove them to take shelter in a harbor which Champlain called Port St. Louis, the same which, fifteen years afterward, welcomed the brave Pilgrims. The shore was at that time lined with wigwams and garden-patches. The inhabitants were very friendly. While some danced on the beach, others who had been fishing came on board the vessel without any sign of alarm, showing their fish-hooks, which were of barbed bone lashed to a slip of wood.[5]

The glistening white sand of a promontory {110} stretching out into the sea suggested to Champlain the name which he bestowed, Cap Blanc (White Cape, now Cape Cod). Doubling it, he held his way southward as far as Nausett Harbor. Here misfortune met the party. As some sailors were seeking fresh water behind the sandhills, an Indian snatched a kettle from one of them. Its owner, pursuing him, was killed by his comrades' arrows. The French fired from the vessel, and Champlain's arquebuse burst, nearly killing him. In the meantime several Indians who were on board leaped so quickly into the water that only one was caught. He was afterward humanely released.

This untoward incident, together with a growing scarcity of provisions, decided the voyagers to turn back. Early in August they reached St. Croix.

Discouraged as to finding a site on the New England coast, Champlain and Monts began to look across the Bay of Fundy, at first called Le Fond de la Baye (the bottom of the bay).

A traveler crossing this water from the west will see a narrow gap in the bold and rugged outline of the shore. Entering it, he will be struck with its romantic beauty, and he will note the {111} tide rushing like a mill-race, for this narrow passage is the outlet of a considerable inland water. The steamer, passing through, emerges into a wide, land-locked basin offering an enchanting view. Fourteen miles northward is Annapolis Harbor, shut in on every side by verdant hills.

This is the veritable Acadia, the beautiful land of Evangeline, and here was made the first settlement of Frenchmen in North America that had any degree of permanence.

The explorers had discovered and entered this enchanting basin in the previous summer. Now its beauty recurred to them, and they determined to remove thither. In their vessels they transported their stores and even parts of their buildings across the Bay of Fundy and laid the foundation of a settlement which they called Port Royal, afterward renamed by loyal Britons Annapolis, in honor of Queen Anne.

The season proved very severe, and in the spring it was decided to persevere in the project of planting a colony, if possible, in a warmer region. For the second time Champlain sailed down the New England coast.

At Chatham Harbor, as the place is now called, five of the voyagers, contrary to orders, {112} were spending the night ashore. The word quickly passed around among the Indians that a number of the palefaces were in their power. Through the dark hours of the night dusky warriors gathered at the meeting-place, until they numbered hundreds. Then they stole silently toward the camp-fire where the unsuspecting Frenchmen lay sleeping. Suddenly a savage yell aroused them, and arrows fell in a shower upon them. Two never rose, slain where they lay. The others fled to their boat, fairly bristling with arrows sticking in them, according to the quaint picture which Champlain made.

In the meantime, he, with Poutrincourt and eight men, aroused from their sleep by the horrid cries on the shore, had leaped from their berths, snatched their weapons, and, clad only in their shirts, pulled to the rescue of their comrades. They charged, and the dusky enemy fled into the woods. Mournfully the voyagers buried their dead, while the barbarians, from a safe distance, jibed and jeered at them. No sooner had the little party rowed back to the ship than they saw the Indians dig up the dead bodies and burn them. The incensed Frenchmen, by a treacherous device, lured some of the assailants within {113} their reach, killed them, and cut off their heads.

Then, discouraged by the savage hostility of the natives, they turned homeward and, late in November, the most of the men sick in body and at heart, reached Port Royal.

Thus ended disastrously Champlain's second attempt to find a lodgment on the New England coast. But he was not a man to be disheartened by difficulties.

Soon the snows of another winter began to fall upon Port Royal, that lonely outpost of civilization. But let us not imagine that the little colony was oppressed with gloom. There were jolly times around the blazing logs in the rude hall, of winter evenings. They had abundant food, fine fresh fish, speared through the ice of the river or taken from the bay, with the flesh of moose, caribou, deer, beaver, and hare, and of ducks, geese, and grouse, and they had organized an "Order of Good Fellowship."

Each member of the company was Grand Master for one day, and it was his duty to provide for the table and then to preside at the feast which he had prepared. This arrangement put each one on his mettle to lay up a good store for {114} the day when he would do the honors of the feast. The Indian chiefs sat with the Frenchmen as their guests, while the warriors and squaws and children squatted on the floor, awaiting the bits of food that were sure to come to them.

In this picture we have an illustration of the ease with which the Frenchmen always adapted themselves to the natives. It was the secret of their success in forming alliances with the Indians, and it was in marked contrast with the harsh conduct of the English and the ruthless cruelty of the Spaniards. No Indian tribes inclined to the English, except the Five Nations, and these chiefly because their sworn enemies, the Algonquins of the St. Lawrence, were hand in glove with the French. None came into contact with the Spaniards who did not execrate them. But the sons of France mingled freely with the dusky children of the soil, made friends of them and quickly won numbers of them to learn their language and adopt their religion. From intermarriages of Frenchmen with Indian women there grew up in Canada a large class of half-breed "voyageurs" (travelers) and "coureurs de bois" (wood-rangers), who in times of peace were skilful hunters and pioneers, and in times {115} of war helped to bind fast the ties between the two races.

In this pleasant fashion the third winter of the colony wore away with little suffering. Only four men died. With the coming of spring all began to bestir themselves in various activities, and everything looked hopeful.

Alas! a bitter disappointment was at hand. News came from France that Monts's monopoly of the fur-trade had been rescinded. The merchants of various ports in France, incensed at being shut out from a lucrative traffic, had used money freely at court and had succeeded in having his grant withdrawn. All the money spent in establishing the colony was to go for nothing.

Worst of all, Port Royal must be abandoned. Its cornfields and gardens must become a wilderness, and the fair promise of a permanent colony must wither. It was a cruel blow to Champlain and his associates, and not less so to the Indians, who followed their departing friends with bitter lamentations.



[1] A low, sandy island, about one hundred miles southeast of Nova Scotia, to which it belongs.

[2] See "The World's Discoverers," p. 140.

[3] See "Pioneer Spaniards in North America," p. 206.

[4] At the time of Champlain's coming on the scene, fierce war existed between the Algonquins and the Iroquois. This fact accounts for the disappearance of the thrifty Iroquois village, with its palisade and cornfields, which Cartier had found on the spot, sixty-eight years earlier.

[5] These Massachusetts Algonquins evidently were of a higher type than their kinsmen on the St. Lawrence. Far from depending wholly on hunting and fishing, they lived in permanent villages and were largely an agricultural people, growing considerable crops. At the time of the coming of the Pilgrims, whom they instructed in corn-planting, this thrifty native population had been sadly wasted by an epidemic of small-pox.



{119}

Chapter IX

SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN (Continued)

THE FRENCH ON THE ST. LAWRENCE AND THE GREAT LAKES

Champlain's Motives in returning to America.—How the Monopoly of the Fur-trade affected the Men engaged in it.—Fight with Free-traders at Tadoussac.—The Founding of Quebec.—The First Bitter Winter.—Champlain starts on an Exploration.—Discovery of Lake Champlain.—Fight with a Band of Iroquois.—Its Unfortunate Consequences.—Another Fight with Iroquois.—Montreal founded.—Champlain's most Important Exploration.—Lake Huron discovered.—A Deer Drive.—Defeated by Iroquois.—Champlain lost in the Woods.—His Closing Years and Death.

Hitherto Champlain has appeared at a disadvantage, because he was in a subordinate capacity. Now we shall see his genius shine, because he is in command.

In 1608 he returned to America, not, however, to Nova Scotia, but to the St. Lawrence. Three motives chiefly actuated him. The first was the unquenchable desire to find a water-way through our continent to China. When, in 1603, he {120} explored the St. Lawrence as far as the rapids beyond Montreal, what he heard from the Indians about the great inland seas created in his mind a strong conviction that through them was a passage to the Pacific, such as the early explorers, notably Henry Hudson (See "The World's Discoverers," p. 328), believed to exist.

The next motive was exceedingly practical. Champlain was deeply impressed with the need of planting strongholds on the great streams draining the vast fur-yielding region, so as to shut out intruders and secure the precious traffic to his countrymen. Let France, he argued, plant herself boldly and strongly on the St. Lawrence, that great highway for the savage's canoe and the white man's ship, and she would control the fur-trade.

The other idea active in his mind was an earnest desire for the conversion of the Indians. It is undeniable that France was genuinely interested in christianizing the natives of America. Some of the most heroic spirits who came to our country came with that object in view, and Champlain was too devoted a Catholic not to share the Church's concern on this point.

So he came out, in the spring of 1608, in {121} command of a vessel furnished by the Sieur de Monts for exploration and settlement. When he reached the desolate trading-post of Tadoussac,[1] an incident occurred that illustrates the reluctance of men to submit to curtailment of their natural rights. If it was hard for men in France to submit patiently to being shut out of a lucrative business by the government's granting the sole right to particular persons, how far more difficult must it have been for men who were on the coasts or rivers of the New World, who had already been engaged in the traffic, and who had opportunities to trade constantly inviting them! An Indian, let us say, paddled alongside with a bundle of valuable furs, eager to get the things which the white men had and beseeching them to barter. But no; they must not deal with him, because they were not employed to buy and sell for the one man who controlled the business.

Of course, many evaded the law, and there was a vast deal of illicit trading in the lonely forests of New France which the watchful eye of the {122} monopolist could not penetrate. Often there were violent and bloody collisions between his employees and the free-traders.

Now, when Champlain reached Tadoussac he found his associate, Pontgrave, who had sailed a week ahead of him, in serious trouble. On arriving at Tadoussac, he had found some Basques driving a brisk trade with the Indians. These Basques were fierce fellows. They belonged to one of the oldest races in the world, a race that has inhabited the slopes of the Pyrenees, on both the Spanish and the French sides, so far back that nobody knows when it came thither; moreover, a sullen and vengeful race. They were also daring voyagers, and their fishing-vessels had been among the earliest to visit the New World, where their name for cod-fish, baccalaos, had been given to Newfoundland, which bears that title on the oldest maps. They had traded with the Indians long before any grant of monopoly to anybody, and they felt that such a grant deprived them of a long-established right.

When Pontgrave showed the royal letters and forbade the traffic, these men swore roundly that they would trade in spite of the King, and backed {123} up their words by promptly opening fire on Pontgrave with cannon and musketry. He was wounded, as well as two of his men, and a third was killed. Then they boarded his vessel and carried away all his cannon, small arms, and ammunition, saying that they would restore them when they had finished their trading and were ready to return home.

Champlain's arrival completely changed the situation. The Basques, who were now the weaker party, were glad to come to terms, agreeing to go away and employ themselves in whale-fishing. Leaving the wounded Pontgrave to load his ship with a rich cargo of furs, Champlain held his way up the St. Lawrence.

A place where the broad stream is shut in between opposing heights and which the Indians called Kebec ("The Narrows"), seemed an ideal situation for a stronghold, being indeed a natural fortress. On this spot, between the water and the cliffs, where the Lower Town now stands, Champlain, in 1608, founded the city of Quebec. Its beginnings were modest indeed—three wooden buildings containing quarters for the leader and his men, a large storehouse, and a fort with two or three small cannon commanding the river.

{124}

The Basques, all this time, were sullenly brooding over the wrong which they conceived had been done them. One day Champlain was secretly informed of a plot among his men to murder him and deliver Quebec into their hands. He acted with his usual cool determination. Through the agency of the man who had betrayed them, the four ringleaders were lured on board a small vessel with a promise of enjoying some wine which was said to have been sent from Tadoussac by their friends, the Basques. They were seized, and the arch-conspirator was immediately hanged, while the other three were taken by Pontgrave back to France, where they were sentenced to the gallows. After these prompt measures Champlain had no more trouble with his men.

Now he was left with twenty-eight men to hold Quebec through the winter. One would think that the cruel sufferings endured by Carder on the same spot, seventy-three years earlier, would have intimidated him. But he was made of stern stuff. Soon the rigors of a Canadian winter settled down on the little post. For neighbors the Frenchmen had only a band of Indians, half-starving and wholly wretched, as was the usual {125} winter condition of the roving Algonquins, who never tilled the soil or made sufficient provision against the cold. The French often gave them food which they needed sorely. Champlain writes of seeing some miserable wretches seize the carcass of a dog which had lain for months on the snow, break it up, thaw, and eat it.

It proved a fearful winter. The scurvy raged among the Frenchmen, and only eight, half of them sick, remained alive out of the twenty-eight. Thus this first winter at Quebec makes the first winter of the Pilgrims at Plymouth seem, by comparison, almost a mild experience.

With the early summer Pontgrave was back from France, and now Champlain, strenuous as ever, determined on carrying out his daring project of exploration, in the hope of finding a route to China. His plan was to march with a war-party of Algonquins and Hurons against their deadly foes, the Iroquois, thus penetrating the region which he wished to explore.

Going up the St. Lawrence as far as the mouth of the Richelieu or Sorel River, and then ascending this stream, the party entered the enemy's country. On the way Champlain had opportunities of witnessing a most interesting ceremony. {126} At every camp the medicine-man, or sorcerer, pitched the magic lodge, of poles covered with dirty deerskin robes, and retired within to hold communion with the unseen powers, while the worshipers sat around in gaping awe. Soon a low muttering was heard, the voice of the medicine-man invoking the spirits. Then came the alleged answer, the lodge rocking to and fro in violent motion. Champlain could see that the sorcerer was shaking the poles. But the Indians fully believed that the Manitou was present and acting. Next they heard its voice, they declared, speak in an unearthly tone, something like the whining of a young puppy. Then they called on Champlain to see fire and smoke issuing from the peak of the lodge. Of course, he did not see any such thing but they did, and were satisfied.[2]

{127}

Soon the river broadened, and Champlain, first of all white men, gazed on the beautiful lake that bears his name. Now traveling became dangerous, and the party moved only in the night, for fear of suddenly encountering a band of the enemy, whom they hoped to surprise. Their plan was to traverse the length of Lake Champlain, then pass into Lake George and follow it to a convenient landing, thence carry their canoes through the woods to the Hudson River, and descend it to some point where they might strike an outlying town of the Mohawks.[3]

{128}

They were saved the trouble of so long a journey. One night, while they were still on Lake Champlain, they caught sight of dark objects moving on the water. A fleet of Iroquois canoes they proved to be. Each party saw the other and forthwith began to yell defiance. The Iroquois immediately landed and began to cut down trees and form a barricade, preferring to fight on shore. The Hurons remained in their canoes all night, not far off, yelling themselves hoarse. Indeed, both parties incessantly howled abuse, sarcasm, and threats at each other. They spoke the same language, the Hurons being a branch of the Iroquois family.

When morning came the allies moved to the attack, Champlain encased in steel armor. He and two other Frenchmen whom he had with him, each in a separate canoe, kept themselves covered with Indian robes, so that their presence was not suspected. The party landed without any opposition and made ready for the fray. Soon the Iroquois filed out from their barricade and advanced, some two hundred in number, many of them carrying shields of wood covered with hide, others protected by a rude armor of tough twigs interlaced.



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As they confidently marched forward, imagine their amazement when the ranks of the enemy suddenly opened, and their steel-clad champion stepped to the front! It was an apparition that might well cause consternation among these men of the wilderness, not one of whom probably had ever seen a white man.

What follows is thus described by Champlain: "I looked at them, and they looked at me. When I saw them getting ready to shoot their arrows at us, I leveled my arquebuse, which I had loaded with four balls, and aimed straight at one of the three chiefs. The shot brought down two and wounded another. On this, our Indians set up such a yelling that one could not have heard a thunder-clap, and all the while the arrows flew thick on both sides. The Iroquois were greatly astonished and frightened to see two of their men killed so quickly, in spite of their arrow-proof armor." When one of Champlain's companions fired a shot from the woods, panic sized them, and they fled in terror. The victory was complete. Some of the Iroquois were killed, more were taken, and their camp, canoes, and provisions all fell into the lands of the visitors.

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This fight, insignificant in itself, had tremendous consequences. Champlain had inconsiderately aroused the vengeance of a terrible enemy. From that day forth, the mighty confederacy of the Five Nations, embracing the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, was the deadly foe of the French. This circumstance gave to the English, in the long struggle for the supremacy of America, the aid of the craftiest, boldest, and most formidable native warriors on the continent.

Another noteworthy thing is that this fight occurred in just the year in which Hudson ascended the river since named for him. His exploration, made in the interest of the Dutch, led to their planting trading-posts on the river.[4]

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Previously the Iroquois had been at a disadvantage, because their enemies, the Hurons, could procure fire-arms from the French, whereas they had not any. But the Dutch traders on the Hudson soon began to sell guns to the Iroquois; and thus one of the first effects of the coming of white men into the wilderness was to equip these two savage races for a deadlier warfare.

The next summer Champlain had another opportunity of taking a hand in a fight between Indians. A canoe came with the exciting news that, a few miles away in the woods, a band of Algonquins had surrounded an invading party of Iroquois who were making a desperate stand within an inclosure of trees. His Indians snatched their weapons and raced for the scene, shouting to Champlain to follow, but leaving him and four of his men to find their way as best they could. They were soon lost in the dense woods. The day was hot, and the air was full of mosquitoes. The Frenchmen struggled on through black mud and knee-deep water and over fallen trees and slimy logs, panting under their heavy corselets; but not a sound could they hear to guide them to the spot.

At last two Indians running to the fight {132} overtook them and led them to the place where the Iroquois, within a circular barricade of trees and interlaced boughs, were fighting savagely. They had beaten off their assailants with heavy loss. When the Frenchmen came up, they received a flight of well-aimed arrows from the desperate defenders. One split Champlain's ear and tore through the muscles of his neck. Another inflicted a similar wound on one of his men. The Indians, seeing the Europeans' heads and breasts covered with steel, had aimed at their faces. But fire-arms soon changed the situation. The Frenchmen ran up close to the barricade, thrust their weapons through the openings, and poured dismay and death among the defenders. The Indian assailants, too, encouraged by this example, rushed in and dragged out the trees of the barricade. At the same time a boat's crew of fur-traders, who had been attracted by the firing, rushed upon the scene and used their guns with deadly effect.

The Iroquois, surrounded and overwhelmed by numbers, fought to the last. The most were killed on the spot. Only fifteen survived and were taken prisoners. Thus the fiercest warriors of North America experienced a second disaster {133} which could not but result in deepening their hatred of the French. These early successes of Champlain were dearly paid for by his country-men long after he was dead.

In the following spring (1611) Champlain did another memorable thing: he established a post, which afterward grew into a trading-station, at Montreal. Thus the two oldest and most historic towns of Canada owe their foundation to him.

Champlain purposed accompanying a great force of Algonquins and Hurons in an inroad into the Iroquois country. The savage warriors, however, unwilling to wait for him, set out for their villages, taking with them an adventurous friar named Le Caron. But Champlain was not to be baulked by this circumstance. He immediately started on the track of the larger party, with ten Indians and two Frenchmen, one of whom was his interpreter, Etienne Brule. He went up the Ottawa River, made a portage through the woods, and launched his canoes on the waters of Lake Nipissing, passing through the country of a tribe so sunk in degrading superstitions, that the Jesuits afterward called them "the Sorcerers."

After resting here two days and feasting on {134} fish and deer, which must have been very welcome diet after the scant fare of the journey, he descended French River, which empties the waters of Nipissing into Lake Huron. On the way down, hunger again pinched his party, and they were forced to subsist on berries which, happily, grew in great abundance. At last a welcome sight greeted Champlain. Lake Huron lay before him. He called it the "Mer Douce" (Fresh-water Sea).

Down the eastern shore of the Georgian Bay for more than a hundred miles Champlain took his course, through countless islets, to its lower end. Then his Indians landed and struck into a well-beaten trail leading into the heart of the Huron country, between Lakes Huron and Ontario. Here he witnessed a degree of social advancement far beyond that of the shiftless Algonquins on the St. Lawrence. Here were people living in permanent villages protected by triple palisades of trees, and cultivating fields of maize and pumpkins and patches of sunflowers. To him, coming from gloomy desolation, this seemed a land of beauty and abundance.

The Hurons welcomed him with lavish hospitality, expecting that he would lead them to {135} victory. He was taken from village to village. In the last he found the friar Le Caron with his twelve Frenchmen. Now there were feasts and dances for several days, while the warriors assembled for the march into the Iroquois country. Then the little army set out, carrying their canoes until they came to Lake Simcoe. After crossing this there came another portage, after which the canoes were launched again on the waters of the river Trent. Down this they made their way until they came to a suitable spot for a great hunt. The Frenchmen watched the proceedings and took part in them with great zest. Five hundred men, forming an extended line, moved through the woods, gradually closing in toward a wooded point on which they drove the game. Then they swept along it to its very end. The frightened deer, driven into the water, were easily killed by the canoe-men with spears and arrows. Such a great hunt supplied the place of a commissary department and furnished food for many days.

Out upon Lake Ontario the fleet of frail barks boldly ventured, crossed it safely, and landed on the shore of what is now New York State. Here the Indians hid their canoes. Now they were on the enemy's soil and must move cautiously. For {136} four days they filed silently through the woods, crossing the outlet of Lake Oneida, and plunged deep into the Iroquois country. One day they came upon a clearing in which some of the people of the neighboring villages were gathering corn and pumpkins.

Some of the impetuous young Hurons uttered their savage yell and rushed upon them. But the Iroquois seized their weapons and defended themselves so well that they drove back their assailants with some loss. Only the Frenchmen, opening fire, saved the Hurons from worse disaster. Then the attacking party moved on to the village. This Champlain found to be far more strongly defended than any he had ever seen among the Indians. There were not less than four rows of palisades, consisting of trunks of trees set in the earth and leaning outward; and there was a kind of gallery well supplied with stones and provided with wooden gutters for quenching fire.

Something more than the hap-hazard methods of the Hurons was needed to capture this stronghold, and Champlain instructed them how to set about it. Under his direction, they built a wooden tower high enough to overlook the palisades and {137} large enough to shelter four or five marksmen. When this had been planted within a few feet of the fortification, three arquebusiers mounted to the top and thence opened a deadly raking fire along the crowded galleries. Had the assailants confined themselves to this species of attack and heeded Champlain's warnings, the result would have been different. But their fury was ungovernable. Yelling their war-cry, they exposed themselves recklessly to the stones and arrows of the Iroquois. One, bolder than the rest, ran forward with firebrands to burn the palisade, and others followed with wood to feed the flame. But torrents of water poured down from the gutters quickly extinguished it. In vain Champlain strove to restore order among the yelling savages. Finding himself unable to control his frenzied allies, he and his men busied themselves with picking off the Iroquois along the ramparts. After three hours of this bootless fighting, the Hurons fell back, with seventeen warriors wounded.[5]

Champlain himself was disabled by two wounds, {138} one in the knee and one in the leg, which hindered him from walking. Still he urged the Hurons to renew the attack. But in vain. From overweening confidence the fickle savages had passed to the other extreme. Nothing could inspire them to another assault. Moreover, Champlain had lost much of his peculiar influence over them. They had fancied that, with him in front, success was sure. Now they saw that he could be wounded, and by Indian weapons, and they had experienced a defeat the blame of which they undoubtedly laid at his door. His "medicine" [6] was not the sure thing they had thought it to be, and no words of his could raise their spirits. After a few days of ineffective skirmishing, they hastily broke up in retreat, carrying their wounded in the centre, while the Iroquois pursued and harassed the flanks and rear.

Champlain was treated like the rest of the wounded. Each was carried in a rude basket made of green withes, on the back of a stout warrior. For days he traveled in this way, enduring, he says, greater torment than he had {139} ever before experienced, "for the pain of the wound was nothing to that of being bound and pinioned on the back of a savage." As soon as he could bear his weight, he was glad to walk.

When the shore of Lake Ontario was reached, the canoes were found untouched, and the crest-fallen band embarked and recrossed to the opposite side. Now Champlain experienced one of the consequences of his loss of prestige. The Hurons had promised him an escort to Quebec. But nobody was willing to undertake the journey. The great war-party broke up, the several bands going off to their wonted hunting-grounds, and Champlain was left with no choice but to spend the winter with the Hurons. One of their chiefs invited him to share his lodge, and he was glad to accept this hospitality.

Shortly afterward he met with a notable adventure. The Hurons were waiting for a hard frost to give them passage over the lakes and marshes that lay between them and their towns. Meanwhile they occupied themselves with hunting. One day Champlain was out with them. For ten days twenty-five men had been at work, preparing for a huge "drive." They had built a strong enclosure, from the opening of which {140} ran two diverging fences of posts interlaced with boughs, extending more than half a mile into the woods. At daybreak the most of the warriors formed a long line and, with shouts and the clattering of sticks, drove the deer toward the pound. The frightened animals rushed down the converging lines of fence into the trap, where they were easily killed.

Champlain was enjoying watching the sport, when a strange bird lured him off, and he lost his way. The day was cloudy, there was no sun to guide him, and his pocket-compass he had left in camp.

All his efforts to retrace his steps failed. At last night came on, and he lay down and slept, supperless, at the foot of a tree. The whole of the next day he wandered, but in the afternoon he came to a pond where there were some waterfowl along the shore. He shot some of these, kindled a fire, cooked his food, and ate with relish. It was dreary November weather, and a cold rain set in. He was without covering of any kind. But he was used to hardships, and he said his prayers and calmly lay down to sleep.

Another day of bewildered wandering followed, and another night of discomfort. On the next {141} day he came upon a little brook. The happy thought came to him that, if he should follow this, it would lead him to the river, near which the hunters were encamped. This he did, and when he came in sight of the river, with a lighter heart he kindled his fire, cooked his supper, and bivouacked once more. The next day he easily made his way down the river to the camp, where there was great joy at his coming. The Indians had searched for him far and wide. From that day forth they never let him go into the forest alone.

The scene of this adventure seems to have been somewhere to the north or north-east of the site of Kingston, Ontario. The Indians encamped here several weeks, during which they killed a hundred and twenty deer. When the hard cold came and the marshy country was solid with ice, they resumed their journey, with their sledges laden with venison. Champlain went on with them from village to village, until he reached the one in which he had left Brother Le Caron. When spring came, the Frenchmen traveled homeward by the same circuitous route by which they had come, by the way of Lake Huron and the Ottawa River.

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Champlain's arrival at Quebec caused universal rejoicing. He was welcomed as one risen from the grave, for the Indians had reported him dead, and a solemn service of thanksgiving for his safety was held.

Here closes the most adventurous period of his career. Though his heart was in the work of exploration, he was destined to spend his remaining years chiefly in nursing the feeble little colony at Quebec. He had not only to hold the balance even between monks and traders, but to guard the puny little colony against frequent Indian outbreaks.

Eighteen years had passed since the foundation of Quebec, and still the population consisted of only one hundred and five persons, men, women, and children. Only two or three families supported themselves from the soil. All the rest were there either as priests or as soldiers or as traders bent on enriching themselves as quickly as possible and then returning to France. This was one of the greatest difficulties that Champlain had to contend with. The French at this time had little thought of anything else than developing a great trade, whereas the English colonists, with strong good sense, set themselves to tilling {143} the soil and to making true homes for themselves and their children's children. The result was that Canada long remained a sickly infant, while the English colonies were growing sturdily.

An event that must have deeply tried Champlain was the surrender of Quebec by his government to the English. He actually spent some time in London as a prisoner, being treated with great consideration. Eventually, however, Quebec was restored to its former masters and Champlain to the governorship.

Thus were spent the last years of his life. He died on Christmas day, in 1635. At his funeral all the little community, Jesuits, officers, soldiers, traders, and settlers, gathered to pay honor to the dead "Father of New France."

He was a great soul, his faults chiefly those of a too confiding nature, always manly and sincere, a brave soldier and a true gentleman, unselfishly devoted to the work to which he had consecrated his life, and on the rude frontiers of the New World living in a spirit worthy of the best ages of chivalry.

The Father of New France is worthily commemorated by a noble monument erected in 1898 and unveiled in the presence of distinguished {144} representatives of Canada, Great Britain, France, and the United States. It stands within the area once covered by Champlain's fort and presents the hero holding in his hand the King's open commission, while with bared head he salutes the child of his hopes, New France.



[1] This place, at the confluence of the Saguenay with the St. Lawrence, was peculiarly well situated for the fur-trade. The Saguenay, having its head-waters far to the north in the dreary region near Hudson Bay, rich in furs, was the route by which the natives of that wild country brought their peltries to market.

[2] The Indians were much given to various forms of divination by which they believed that they ascertained the will of the unseen powers.

Jonathan Carver, who traveled much among the western tribes, about 1766, relates that once when he was with a band of Christinos, or Crees, on the north shore of Lake Superior, anxiously awaiting the coming of certain traders with goods, the chief told him that the medicine-man, or conjurer, or "clairvoyant" as we should say, would try to get some information from the Manitou. Elaborate preparations were made. In a spacious tent, brightly lighted with torches of pitch-pine, the conjurer, wrapped in a large elk-skin, and corded with about forty yards of elk-hide lariat—"bound up like an Egyptian mummy"—was laid down in the midst of the assembly, in full view of all.

Presently he began to mutter, then to jabber a mixed jargon of several native tongues, sometimes raving, sometimes praying, till he had worked himself into a frenzy and foamed at the mouth.

Suddenly he leaped to his feet, shaking off his bands "as if they were burnt asunder," and announced that the Manitou had revealed to him that, just at noon on the next day, there would arrive a canoe the occupants of which would bring news as to the expected traders.

On the next day Carver and his Indian friends were on the bluff watching. At the appointed hour a canoe (undoubtedly sent by the conjurer) came into view and was hailed by the Indians with shouts of delight. It brought tidings of the early coming of the traders.

[3] This was the established route used by the Indians. By it one could pass by water, with only the short carry between Lake George and the Hudson, all the way from the Great Lakes to the ocean.

[4] The thrifty Hollanders at once saw the importance of securing the fur-trade of the region thus opened to them. To protect it, they first established at the mouth of the river, on Manhattan Island, the post out of which the city of New York has grown. Next they reared a fort on an island a little below Albany; and, in 1623, they built Fort Orange, on the site of Albany. It soon became a most important point, because, until Fort Stanwix, on the Mohawk, was built, it was the nearest white man's post to which the Indians of the great Iroquois confederacy might bring their peltries. We hear much of it in the early history.

The great trading-stations were always on big rivers, because these drained a wide territory, and the supply of furs lasted long. As the French pushed further westward, as we shall see, important stations were opened on the Great Lakes.

[5] We may wonder at so small a list of casualties. The fact is that, until the introduction of fire-arms, Indian open fighting was not very deadly. They might yell and screech and shoot arrows at each other for hours, with very little loss. Surprises and ambuscades were their most effective methods.

[6] This word came into general use among French voyageurs and, later, among white men generally, as the equivalent of an Indian word denoting mysterious power.



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Chapter X

JESUIT MISSIONARY PIONEERS

Unselfishness of the Better Class of Jesuits.—Their Achievements in Exploration.—The Great Political Scheme of which they were the Instruments.—Indian Superstitions.—Danger!—The Touching Story of Isaac Jogues.—Ferocity of the Five Nations.—Ruin of the Hurons and of the Jesuit Missions among them.

A class of men whose aims were singularly unselfish were the missionaries of the Roman Catholic Church, mostly Jesuits, that is, members of the Society of Jesus. The first object of the best of them was to convert the Indians and establish a great branch of the Catholic Church in the wilds of America. There were others, however, whose first aim was to increase the power of France. These politician-priests were well represented by the famous Father Allouez who, while he preached the gospel to the Indians, took still greater pains to preach the glory of the French King, whose subjects he wished to make them. On one occasion, supported by a French officer and his {148} soldiers, drawn up under arms, he thus addressed a large assemblage of Indians gathered at Sault Ste. Marie:

"When our King attacks his enemies, he is more terrible than the thunder: the earth trembles; the air and the sea are all on fire with the blaze of his cannon; he is seen in the midst of his warriors, covered over with the blood of his enemies, whom he kills in such numbers that he does not count them by the scalps, but by the streams of blood which he causes to flow. In each city he has storehouses where there are hatchets enough to cut down all your forests, kettles enough to cook all your moose, and beds enough to fill all your lodges. His house is higher than the tallest of your trees and holds more families than the largest of your towns. Men come from every quarter of the earth to listen to and admire him. All that is done in the world is decided by him alone."

But we are not now concerned with such scheming priests. We wish to sketch very briefly the story of some of those faithful and single-hearted men who were true missionaries of religion. In their journeys into the wilds they often proved themselves pathfinders, penetrating {149} regions never before trodden by the foot of a white man. Many a tribe got its first impression of our race from these peaceful preachers. A mission priest, Le Caron, was the first white man who saw Lake Huron. Another, the heroic Jogues, was the first of our race to see Lake George. Thus the work of Catholic missionaries must have a large place in any truthful account of early New France. In fact, the history of Canada is for a long time the history of Jesuit activity.

These men were in the habit of sending to their superiors in the Old World copious accounts of all that they saw or did. These reports, which are known as the "Jesuit Relations," form a perfect storehouse of information about early Canadian affairs and about the Indians with whom the French were in contact.

These Jesuit priests commonly were highly educated men, accustomed to all the refinements of life—some of them of noble families—and we can only measure their devotion to the cause of religion when we realize the contrast between their native surroundings and the repulsive savagery into which they plunged when they went among the Indians. Think of such a man as {150} Father Le Jeune, cultivated and high-minded, exiling himself from his white brethren for a whole season, which he spent with a band of Algonquins, roaming the wintry forests with them, sharing their hunger and cold and filth, sometimes on the verge of perishing from sheer starvation, at other times, when game chanced to be plentiful, revolted by the gorging of his companions, at all times disgusted by their nastiness. "I told them again and again," he writes, "that if dogs and swine could talk, they would use just such speech;" a remark which shows, by the way, that the good friar did not think so highly of dumb animals as we do in these more enlightened days.

But he had abundant charity, and he noted that underneath all this coarse rudeness there was genuine fellowship among these savages; that they cheerfully helped one another, and when food was scarce, fairly distributed the smallest portion among all. Such observations helped him to endure his lot with serenity, even when he was himself made the butt of the coarsest jokes. He survived his hard experiences and, after five months of roaming, exhausted and worn to a shadow, rejoined the brethren in the rude convent at Quebec.

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There was much of this fine spirit about the best of the Jesuits. But, besides this individual devotion, there was another important circumstance: they were only private soldiers in a great army. They had no will of their own, for one of the first principles of the Order was absolute obedience. Wherever their superiors might send them they must go without a question. Whatever they might be ordered to do, they must do it without a murmur.

It became the policy of the leading men of the Order in Canada to establish missionary posts among the Hurons who, living in fixed habitations, were more hopeful subjects than the roving Algonquins of the St. Lawrence region. It would be a great gain, they reasoned, if these people could be brought within the pale of the Church. At the same time that so many souls would be saved from everlasting flames, the immensely lucrative fur-trade of a vast region would be secured to the French, and the King would gain thousands of dusky subjects. Canada would flourish, the fur-traders would grow richer than ever, and France would be in the way of extending her rule ever farther and further over the western forests and waters—all through the {152} exertions of a few faithful and single-hearted men who went to preach religion.

The three men chosen for the work among the Hurons were Fathers Brebeuf, Daniel, and Davost. On their journey to their post, if they could have followed a direct line, they would have gone up the St. Lawrence to Lake Ontario, traversed the length of the lake, and then by a short overland journey reached their destination. But this route would have exposed them to the ferocious Iroquois, whose country bordered Lake Ontario on the south. Therefore, it was necessary to take the long and circuitous canoe-voyage which Champlain had taken fifteen years earlier (See map).

At last, after many pains and perils, half-dead with hunger and fatigue, they reached a village of the Huron country. Soon they settled down to the routine of their daily life, of which they have left us a very readable account. Every day they had numerous visitors, some from long distances, who came to gaze in silent wonder at their domestic arrangements. For instance, there was the clock. They squatted on the floor for hours, watching it and waiting to hear it strike. They thought it was alive and asked what it ate. {153} They listened in awe when it struck, sure that they heard the voice of a living being. "The Captain" they called it.

Sometimes one of the French soldiers who accompanied the Jesuits, when "the Captain" had sounded his last stroke, would cry out, "Stop!" Its immediate silence proved that it heard and obeyed.

"What does the Captain say?" the Indians sometimes asked.

"When he strikes twelve times, he says, 'Hang on the kettle,' and when he strikes four times, he says, 'Get up and go home.'"

This was a particularly happy thought; at the stroke of four their visitors would invariably rise and take themselves off.

In spite of the lack of outward signs of success, the good men were making a conquest of the savage people's hearts. Their unwearied patience, their kindness, the innocence of their lives, and the tact with which they avoided every occasion of ill-will, did not fail to gain the confidence of those whom they sought to win, and chiefs of distant villages came to urge that they would take up their abode with them. Soon the Huron country contained no less than {154} six different points where faithful priests preached the gospel.

The Fathers had abundant opportunities of observing the habits of the natives. They have left a most interesting description of the great Feast of the Dead, which was held at intervals of ten or twelve years, and the object of which was to gather into one great burying-place all the dead of the tribe, these being removed from their temporary resting-places on scaffolds and in graves. It was believed that the souls of the dead remained with their bodies until the great common burial, then they would depart to the spirit-world.[1]

This practice, of a great common burial, explains the occurrence, in various parts of the country once occupied by the Hurons, of pits {155} containing the remains of many hundreds of persons all mixed together promiscuously, together with belts of wampum, copper ornaments, glass beads, and other articles. One of these deposits is said to have contained the remains of several thousand persons.[2]

The story of Isaac Jogues is a good example both of the Jesuit missionaries' sufferings and of their fortitude. He had gone to Quebec for supplies and was returning to the Huron country with two young Frenchmen, Goupil and Couture, and a number of Hurons. Suddenly the war-whoop rang in their ears, and a fleet of Iroquois canoes bore down upon them from adjacent islands, with a terrific discharge of musketry. The Hurons for the greater part leaped ashore and fled. Jogues sprang into the bulrushes and could have got away. When he saw some of the converted Indians in the hands of their enemies, he determined to share their fate, came out from his hiding-place, and gave himself up. Goupil {156} was taken prisoner. Couture had got away, but the thought of the fate that probably awaited Jogues decided him to go back and cast in his lot with him. In the affray, however, he had killed an Iroquois. In revenge, the others fell upon him furiously, stripped off all his clothing, tore away his finger-nails with their teeth, gnawed his fingers, and thrust a sword through one of his hands. Jogues broke from his guards, ran to his friend, and threw his arms about his neck. This so incensed the Iroquois that they turned upon him, beat him with their fists and war-clubs till he was senseless, and gnawed his fingers as they had done Couture's. Goupil next received the same ferocious treatment.

The victorious Iroquois now started off with their captives for their country. Their route lay up the river Richelieu, through the length of Lake Champlain, and through the greater part of Lake George to a point where they were wont to leave it and cross over to the Hudson. There was picturesque scenery by the way. But what charm had the beauties of Lake Champlain and distant glimpses of the Adirondacks for the poor prisoners, harassed by the pain and fever of their wounds, in the day cruelly beaten by their captors and at {157} night so tormented by clouds of mosquitoes that they could not sleep? In time they passed the sites of Crown Point and Ticonderoga, sighted romantic Lake George, which these three lonely white men were the first of their race to see, and landed from their canoes at the place where afterward rose Fort William Henry, the scene of one of the most shocking tragedies of the Colonial Wars.

Thirteen dreadful days the journey occupied, from the St. Lawrence to its termination at a palisaded town on the banks of the Mohawk. On Lake Champlain they had met a war-party of Iroquois, and the prisoners, for their delight, had been compelled to run the gauntlet between a double line of braves armed with clubs and thorny sticks. When Jogues fell drenched in blood and half-dead, he was recalled to consciousness by fire applied to his body. Couture's experience illustrates a singular trait of the ferocious Iroquois. There was nothing that they admired so much as bulldog courage; and though he had exasperated them by killing one of their warriors, they punished him only by subjecting him to excruciating tortures. His fortitude under these still further increased their admiration and they ended by adopting him {158} into the tribe. Many years later we read of him still living among the Mohawks. Jogues and Goupil they dragged from town to town, in each place exposing them on a scaffold and subjecting them to atrocities contrived to cause the utmost suffering without endangering life. Yet, in an interval between tortures, Jogues seized an opportunity to baptize some Huron prisoners with a few rain-drops gathered from the husks of an ear of green corn thrown to him for food.

Three of the Hurons were burned to death, and the two Frenchmen expected the same fate. Goupil did indeed meet with his death, but in a different way. He was once seen to make the sign of the cross on the forehead of a grandchild of the Indian in whose lodge he lived. The old man's superstition was aroused, having been told by the Dutch that the sign of the cross came from the Devil. So he imagined that Goupil had bewitched the child.

The next morning, as the two Frenchmen were walking together, talking of the glory of suffering for the sake of Christ, they met two young Indians, one of whom buried his hatchet in Goupil's head. Jogues gave absolution to his dying friend and then, kneeling calmly, bowed his neck to the blow {159} which he expected. Instead, he was ordered to get up and go home.

For a time his life hung on a thread. He would have welcomed death. But the very indifference to it which he showed was probably the reason why the Iroquois spared him. Now he led an existence of horrible drudgery. After a while, as he showed no disposition to escape, he was allowed to come and go as he pleased. So he went from town to town, teaching and baptizing whenever he could get a chance. The gangs of prisoners whom the Iroquois brought home from the Huron country, and whom they almost invariably burned, furnished him an abundance of subjects to work on.

Once it happened that he went with a party of Indians to a fishing-place on the Hudson. Thence some of them went up the river to Fort Orange, a miserable structure of logs, standing within the limits of the present city of Albany. The Dutch settlers there had heard of Jogues's captivity and, strenuous Protestants though they were, had striven to secure his release by offering goods to a large value. Now that he was among them, they urged him not to return to his captors, but to make his escape, since his death was certain, if he went back. They offered to smuggle him {160} on board a vessel that lay in the river and pay his way to France. He resolved to seize the tempting opportunity.

It would make our story too long if we should tell at length the narrow escapes that he still experienced before he succeeded in getting away. At his first attempt to slip away at night, he was severely bitten by a savage dog belonging to the Dutch farmer with whom he and the Indians lodged. When he got off he lay two days hidden in the hold of the vessel that was to carry him away. Then the Indians came out and so frightened its officers that he was sent ashore and put under the care of a miserly old fellow who ate the most of the food that was provided for Jogues. While he was hidden in this man's garret he was within a few feet of Indians who came there to trade. Finally the Dutch satisfied the Indians by paying a large ransom and shipped Jogues down the river. He received nothing but kindness from the Dutch everywhere and, on his arrival at Manhattan (New York), was furnished by the Governor with a suit of clothes, instead of his tattered skins, and given a passage to Europe.

At last he landed on the coast of Brittany. In due time he reached Paris, and the city was stirred {161} with the tale of his sufferings and adventures. He was summoned to court, and the ladies thronged about him to do him reverence, while the Queen kissed his mutilated hands.

Would not one think that Jogues had had enough of the New World, with its deadly perils and cruel pains? But so it was not. His simple nature cared nothing for honors. His heart was over the water, among the savages whom he longed to save. Besides, he was only a private soldier in that great army, the Jesuit brotherhood, of which every member was sworn to act, to think, to live, for but one object, the advancement of religion as it was represented by the Order. And who was so fit for the work among the Indians as Jogues, who knew their language and customs?

So, in the following spring we find him again on the Atlantic, bound for Canada. Two years he passed in peaceful labors at Montreal. Then his supreme trial came. Peace had been made between the French and the Mohawks, and Couture still lived among the latter, for the express purpose of holding them steadfast to their promises. But, for some reason, the French apprehended an outbreak of hostilities, and it was {162} resolved to send envoys to the Indian country. At the first mention of the subject to Jogues he shrank from returning to the scene of so much suffering. But the habit of implicit obedience triumphed, and he quickly announced his willingness to do the will of his superiors, which to him was the will of God. "I shall go, but I shall never return," he wrote to a friend.

He started out with a small party carrying a load of gifts intended to conciliate the Iroquois, and followed the route that was associated in his mind with so much misery, up the Richelieu and Lake Champlain and through Lake George. At the head of this water they crossed over to the Hudson, borrowed canoes from some Indians fishing there, and dropped down the river to Fort Orange. Once more Jogues was among his Dutch friends. Glad as they were to see him, they wondered at his venturing back among the people who had once hunted him like a noxious beast. From Fort Orange he ascended the Mohawk River to the first Indian town. With what wonder the savages must have gazed at the man who had lived among them as a despised slave, and now had come back laden with gifts as the ambassador of a great power! They received {163} him graciously, and when his errand was done, he returned safe to Quebec.

It would have been well for him if his superiors had contented themselves with what he had already done and suffered. But they had a grand scheme of founding a mission among the Iroquois. They knew its perils and called it "The Mission of Martyrs." To this post of danger Jogues was sent. The devoted man went without a murmur. On the way he met Indians who warned him of danger, and his Huron companions turned back, but he went on. Arrived among the Mohawks, he found a strong tide of feeling running against him. The accident that aroused it illustrates Indian superstitiousness. On his former visit, expecting to return, he had left a small box. From the first the Indians suspected it of being, like Pandora's box in the old mythology, full of all kinds of ills. But Jogues opened it and showed them that it contained only some harmless personal effects. After he was gone, however, some Huron prisoners wrought on their terror and at the same time reviled the French, declaring that the latter had almost ruined the Huron nation by their witchcraft and had brought on it drought, plague, pestilence, and famine.

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The Iroquois were well-nigh wild with rage and fright. At any moment the small-pox or some other horror might step out of the little box and stalk abroad among them. The three clans that made up the tribe were divided. The clans of the Wolf and the Tortoise were for keeping the peace; but the clan of the Bear was for making war on the French. Just then, by ill fortune, Jogues, approaching the Mohawk villages, encountered a band of Bear warriors. They seized and dragged him to their town. Here he was savagely attacked and beaten with fists and clubs. In vain he reminded them that he had come on an errand of peace. They tortured him cruelly. The Wolf and Tortoise clans protested against this violation of the peace, but the others carried everything before them.

The next day Jogues was bidden to a feast. He did not dare refuse to go. As he entered the lodge of the Bear chief, in spite of the efforts of an Indian who exposed his own life in trying to save him, a hatchet was buried in his brain. Thus died a singularly pure and unselfish man, a Pathfinder, too, for he was one of the three white men who first saw Lake George.

Shortly after the death of Jogues, war broke {165} out again. Nothing could have exceeded the ferocity of the Five Nations. They boasted that they intended to sweep the French and their Indian friends off the face of the earth. No place seemed too remote for them. At the most unexpected moments of the day or the night they rose, as it seemed, out of the earth, and, with their blood-curdling war-whoop, fell upon their intended victims with guns and tomahawks. The poor Algonquins were in a state of pitiable terror. Nowhere were they safe. Even when they retired into the wilderness north of the St. Lawrence, they were tracked by their ruthless foes, slaughtered, burned, and drowned.

We might go on and tell the story of other priests who all fell at the post of duty and died worthily. But of what use would it be to prolong these horrors? Enough to say that the Huron nation was almost annihilated, the feeble remnant left their country and went elsewhere, and the once promising work of the Jesuits among them ended in fire and blood.

A small party of the Hurons accompanied the returning priests to the French settlements and became established, under French protection, near Quebec, at a place called New Lorette, or Indian {166} Lorette, and fought by the side of their white friends in later wars. There, to this day, their descendants, mostly French half-breeds, may be seen engaged in the harmless occupations of weaving baskets and making moccasins. Another band wandered away to the far Northwest, came into conflict with the warlike and powerful Sioux, and, driven back eastward, finally took up its abode near the sites of Detroit and Sandusky. Under the name of Wyandots, its descendants played a conspicuous part in our border wars.



[1] The faith of the Indians in a future life was very sincere and strong. Jonathan Carver tells a touching story of a couple whom he knew who lost a little son of about four years. They seemed inconsolable. After a time the father died. Then the mother dried her tears and ceased her lamentations. When he asked her the reason of this, as it seemed to him, strange conduct, she answered that she and her husband had grieved excessively, because they knew that their little boy would be alone in the other world, without anybody to provide for his wants, but now, his father having gone to join him, her mind was at rest in the assurance that the little fellow would be well cared for and happy.

[2] This usage seems to have been quite general. Jonathan Carver, in 1767, tells of a common burying-place of several bands of the Sioux, to which these roving people carefully brought their dead at a given time, depositing them with great solemnity. These bodies had previously been temporarily placed on rude scaffolds on the limbs of trees, awaiting the general interment.



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Chapter XI

JEAN NICOLLET, LOUIS JOLIET, AND FATHER JACQUES MARQUETTE

THE DISCOVERERS OF THE MISSISSIPPI

Jean Nicollet's Voyage on the Wisconsin.—Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette are sent by Count Frontenac to follow the Course of the Mississippi.—On the Wisconsin.—The "Great Water" reached.—Hospitably entertained in an Indian Camp.—An Invaluable Gift.—The Mouth of the Missouri and the Mouth of the Ohio passed.—The Outlet of the Arkansas reached.—Hardships of the Return Voyage.—Death of Marquette.—Joliet's Mishap.

A notable coureur de bois (a French-Canadian wood-ranger) was Jean Nicollet. He had lived for years among the savages and had become thoroughly Indian in his habits. He was sent by the French Governor, about 1638, as an ambassador to the Winnebagoes, west of Lake Michigan. He had heard among his Indian friends of a strange people without hair or beard who came from beyond the Great Water to trade with the Indians on the Lakes. Who could these beardless men be but Chinese or Japanese?

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So fully possessed was he by this idea that, in order to make a suitable appearance before the Orientals whom he expected to meet, he took along with him a robe of heavy Chinese silk, embroidered with birds and flowers. When he neared the Winnebago town, he sent a messenger ahead to announce his coming, and, having put on his gorgeous robe, followed him on the scene. Never did a circus, making its grand entry into a village in all the glory of gilded chariots and brass band, inspire deeper awe than this primitive ambassador, with his flaming robe and a pair of pistols which he fired continually. His pale face, the first that the Winnebagoes had ever seen, gave them a sense of something unearthly. The squaws and the children fled into the woods, shrieking that it was a manitou (spirit) armed with thunder and lightning. The warriors, however, stood their ground bravely and entertained him with a feast of one hundred and twenty beaver.[1]

But if Nicollet did not succeed in opening relations with Cathay and Cipango (China and {171} Japan), he did something else that entitles him to be commemorated among the Pathfinders. He ascended Fox River to its head-waters, crossed the little divide that separates the waters flowing into the Lakes from those that empty into the Gulf of Mexico, and launched his canoe on the Wisconsin, the first white man, so far as we know, who floated on one of the upper tributaries of the mighty river. This was just about one hundred years after Soto had crossed it in its lower course. On his return, he reported that he had followed the river until he came within three days of the sea. Undoubtedly he misunderstood his Indian guides. The "Great Water" of which they spoke was almost certainly the Mississippi, for that is what the name means.

The first undoubted exploration of the mighty river took place thirty-five years later. It was made by two men who combined the two aspects of Jesuit activity, the spiritual and the worldly. Louis Joliet was born in Canada, of French parents. He was educated by the Jesuits, and was all his life devoted to them. He was an intelligent merchant, practical and courageous. No better man could have been chosen for the work assigned him.

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His companion in this undertaking was a Jesuit priest, Jacques Marquette, who was a fine example of the noblest qualities ever exhibited by his order. He was settled as a missionary at Michillimackinac, on Mackinaw Strait, when Joliet came to him from Quebec with orders from Count Frontenac to go with him to seek and explore the Mississippi.

On May 17, 1673, in very simple fashion, in two birch-bark canoes, with five white voyageurs and a moderate supply of smoked meat and Indian corn, the two travelers set out to solve a perplexing problem, by tracing the course of the great river. Their only guide was a crude map based on scraps of information which they had gathered. Besides Marquette's journal, by a happy chance we have that of Jonathan Carver, who traveled over the same route nearly a hundred years later. From him we get much useful and interesting information.

At the first, the explorers' course lay westward, along the northern shore of Lake Michigan and into Green Bay. The Menomonie, or Wild-rice Indians, one of the western branches of the Algonquin family, wished to dissuade them from going further. They told of ferocious tribes, {173} who would put them to death without provocation, and of frightful monsters (alligators) which would devour them and their canoes. The voyagers thanked them and pushed on, up Fox River and across Lake Winnebago.

At the approach to the lake are the Winnebago Rapids, which necessitate a portage, or "carry." Our voyagers do not mention having any trouble here. But, at a later time, according to a tradition related by Dr. R. G. Thwaites, this was the scene of a tragic affair. When the growing fur-trade made this route very important, the Fox Indians living here made a good thing out of carrying goods over the trail and helping the empty boats over the rapids. They eventually became obnoxious by taking toll from passing traders. Thereupon the Governor of New France sent a certain Captain Marin to chastise them. He came up the Fox River with a large party of voyageurs and half-breeds on snow-shoes, surprised the natives in their village, and slaughtered them by hundreds.

At another time the same man led a summer expedition against the Foxes. He kept his armed men lying down in the boats and covered with oilcloth like goods. Hundreds of red-skins {174} were squatting on the beach, awaiting the coming of the flotilla. The canoes ranged up along the shore. Then, at a signal, the coverings were thrown off, and a rain of bullets was poured into the defenceless savages, while a swivel-gun mowed down the victims of this brutality. Hundreds were slaughtered, it is said.

On to the lower Fox River their course led the explorers. This brought them into the country of the Miamis, the Mascoutins, once a powerful tribe, now extinct, and the Kickapoos, all Algonquins of the West.

A council was held, and the Indians readily granted their request for guides to show them the way to the Wisconsin. Through the tortuous and blind course of the little river, among lakes and marshes, they would have had great difficulty in making their way unaided.[2]

When they came to the portage, where now stands the city of Portage,[3] with its short canal {175} connecting the two rivers, they carried their canoes across, and launched their little barks on the Wisconsin. Down this river they would float to the great mysterious stream that would carry them they knew not whither, perhaps to the Sea of Virginia (the Atlantic), perhaps to the Gulf of Mexico, perhaps to the Vermilion Sea (the Gulf of California).

Whether they would ever return from the dim, undiscovered country into which they were venturing, who could say? It seems amazing that one hundred and thirty years after Soto had crossed the great river, intelligent Frenchmen were ignorant even of its outlet. It shows how successfully Spain had suppressed knowledge of the territory which she claimed.

Down the quiet waters of the Wisconsin the voyagers glided, passing the thrifty villages of the Sacs and Foxes, then a powerful people, now almost extinct. On June 17, exactly one month from the day of their starting, their canoes {176} shot out into a rapid current, here a mile wide, and with joy beyond expression, as Marquette writes, they knew that they had achieved the first part of their undertaking. They had reached the "Great Water."

What would have been the feelings of these unassuming voyagers, if they could have looked down the dim vista of time, and have seen the people of a great and prosperous commonwealth (Wisconsin), on June 17, 1873, celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of their achievement!

Strange sights unfolded themselves, as they made their way down the mighty stream and looked on shores that no eyes of a white man had ever beheld. What magnificent solitudes! Only think of it—more than a fortnight without seeing a human being!

They used always extreme caution, as well they might, in view of the tales that had been told them of ferocious savages roaming that region. They went ashore in the evening, cooked and ate their supper, and then pushed out and anchored in the stream, keeping a man on watch till morning.

After more than two weeks of this solitary voyaging, one day they saw a well-trodden path {177} that led to the adjacent prairie. Joliet and Marquette determined to follow it, leaving the canoes in charge of their men. After a walk of some miles inland, they came to an Indian village, with two others in sight. They advanced with beating hearts. What was their reception to be? When they were near enough to hear voices in the wigwams, they stood out in the open and shouted to attract attention. A great commotion ensued, and the inmates swarmed out. Then, to their intense relief, four chiefs advanced deliberately, holding aloft two calumets, or peace-pipes. They wore French cloth, from which it was evident that they traded with the French. These people proved to belong to the great Illinois tribe, the very people some of whom had met Marquette at his mission-station and had begged him, as he says, "to bring them the word of God."

Now, after the pipe of peace had been duly smoked, he had the long-desired opportunity of delivering the message of salvation. He did not fail to add some words about the power and glory of Onontio (Count Frontenac). The head chief replied in a flowery speech, after the most approved fashion of Indian oratory, assuring his {178} guests that their presence made his tobacco sweeter, the river calmer, the sky more serene, and the earth more beautiful. He further showed his friendship by giving them a boy as a slave and, best of all, a calumet, or peace-pipe,[4] which was to serve as a commendation to the goodwill of other Indians. Invaluable the voyagers found it.

The friendly chief also represented very strongly the danger of going further down the {179} Great Water and vainly tried to dissuade them. Feasting followed. After various courses, a dainty dish of boiled dog was served, then one of fat buffalo, much to the Frenchmen's relief. Throughout this entertainment the master of ceremonies fed the guests as if they had been infants, removing fish-bones with his fingers and blowing on hot morsels to cool them, before putting them into their mouths. This was the very pink of Indian courtesy.

The two Frenchmen spent the night with their dusky friends and the next day were escorted to their canoes by several hundreds of them. This first encounter with Indians of the Mississippi Valley on their own soil seems to have taken place not far from the site of Keokuk.

The voyagers' next sensation was experienced after passing the mouth of the Illinois River. Immediately above the site of the city of Alton, the flat face of a high rock was painted, in the highest style of Indian art, with representations of two horrible monsters, to which the natives were wont to make sacrifices as they passed on the river. The sight of them caused in the pious Frenchmen a feeling that they were in the Devil's country, for to Christians of the seventeenth century heathen {180} gods were not mere creatures of the imagination, but living beings, demons, high captains in Satan's great army.

Soon the voyagers were made to fear for their safety by a mighty torrent of yellow mud surging athwart the blue current of the Mississippi, sweeping down logs and uprooting trees, and dashing their light canoes like leaves on an angry brook. They were passing the mouth of the Missouri. A few days later they crossed the outlet of the Ohio, "Beautiful River," as the Iroquois name means.

All the time it was growing hotter. The picturesque shores of the upper river had given place to dense canebrakes, and swarms of mosquitoes pestered them day and night. Now they had a note of danger in meeting some Indians who evidently were in communication with Europeans, for they had guns and carried their powder in small bottles of thick glass. These Europeans could be none other than the Spaniards to the southward, of whom it behooved the Frenchmen to beware, if they did not wish to pull an oar in a galley or swing a pick in a silver-mine. Still there was a satisfaction in the thought that, having left one civilization thousands of miles behind them, {181} they had passed through the wilderness to the edge of another. These Indians readily responded to the appeal of the Frenchmen's calumet, invited them ashore, and feasted them.

On toward the ocean, which they were falsely told was distant only ten days' journey, the voyagers sped, passing the point at which, one hundred and thirty-three years earlier, Soto, with the remnant of his army, had crossed the mighty river in whose bed his bones were destined to rest. Above the mouth of the Arkansas they were for a time in deadly peril from Indians. These were of the Mitchigamea tribe, who, with the Chickasaws and others of the Muskoki family, fought the Spaniards so valiantly. Canoes were putting out above and below, to cut off the explorers' retreat, while some young warriors on the shore were hastily stringing their bows, all animated doubtless by bitter memories of white men inherited from Soto's time. Once more the calumet saved its bearers. Marquette all the while held it aloft, and some of the elders, responding to its silent appeal, succeeded in restraining the fiery young men. The strangers were invited ashore, feasted, as usual, and entertained over night. They had some misgivings, but did not {182} dare refuse these hospitalities; and no harm befell them.

The next stage of their journey brought them to a village just opposite the mouth of the Arkansas River. Here they were received in great state by the Arkansas Indians, notice of their coming having been sent ahead by their new friends. There was the usual speechmaking, accompanied by interminable feasting, in which a roasted dog held the place of honor. There was a young Indian who spoke Illinois well, and through him Marquette was able to preach, as well as to gain information about the river below. He was told that the shores were infested by fierce savages armed with guns.

By this time it was evident that nothing was to be gained by going further. The explorers had ascertained beyond dispute that the Mississippi emptied its waters, not directly into the Atlantic, or into the Pacific, but into the Gulf of Mexico. If they went further, they ran the risk of being killed by Indians or falling into the hands of Spaniards. In either case the result of their discovery would be lost. Therefore they resolved to return to Canada. Just two months from their starting and one month from their {183} discovery of the Great Water they began their return.

Their route was a different one from the original, for on reaching the mouth of the Illinois River they entered and ascended it. On the way, they stopped at a famous village of the Illinois tribe called Kaskaskia. Thence they were guided by a band of young warriors through the route up the Des Plaines River and across the portage to Lake Michigan. Coasting its shore, they reached Green Bay, after an absence of four months.

Thus ended a memorable voyage. The travelers had paddled their canoes more than two thousand, five hundred miles, had explored two of the three routes leading into the Mississippi, and had followed the Great Water itself to within seven hundred miles of the ocean. They had settled one of the knotty geographical points of their day, that of the river's outlet. All this they had done in hourly peril of their lives. Though they experienced no actual violence, there was no time at which they were not in danger.

In the end the voyage cost Marquette his life, for its hardships and exposures planted in his system the germs of a disease from which he {184} never fully recovered, and from which he died, two years later, on the shore of Lake Michigan.

Joliet met with a peculiar misfortune. At the Lachine Rapids, just above Montreal, almost at the very end of his voyage of thousands of miles, his canoe was upset, two men and his little Indian boy were drowned, and his box of papers, including his precious journal, was lost. Undoubtedly his daily record of the voyage would have been very valuable, for he was a man of scholarship as well as of practical ability. But its accidental loss gave the greater fame to Marquette, whose account was printed. In recent years, however, he has been recognized as an equal partner with the noble priest in the great achievement.



[1] These Winnebagoes were the most eastern branch of the great Dakota-Sioux family. Their ancestors were the builders, it is believed, of the Wisconsin mounds.

[2] Carver says, "It is with difficulty that canoes can pass through the obstructions they meet with from the rice-stalks. This river is the greatest resort for wild fowl that I met with in the whole course of my travels; frequently the sun would be obscured by them for some minutes together."

[3] This spot has a remarkable interest as the place where, within a very short distance, rise the waters that flow away to the eastward, through the Great Lakes, into the North Atlantic, and those that now southward to the Mississippi and the Gulf. It is, however, according to Carver, most uninviting in appearance, "a morass overgrown with a kind of long grass, the rest of it a plain, with some few oak and pine trees growing thereon. I observed here," he says, "a great number of rattlesnakes."

[4] The following description of this very important article is taken from Father Hennepin:

"This Calumet is the most mysterious Thing in the World among the Savages of the Continent of the Northern America: for it is used in all their most important Transactions. However, it is nothing else but a large Tobacco-pipe made of Red, Black, or White Marble: The Head is finely polished, and the Quill, which is commonly two Foot and a half long, is made of a pretty strong Reed, or Cane, adorned with Feathers of all Colours, interlaced with Locks of Women's Hair. They tie to it two wings of the most curious Birds they find, which makes their Calumet not unlike Mercury's Wand.

"A Pipe, such as I have described it, is a Pass and Safe Conduct amongst all the Allies of the Nation who has given it; for the Savages are generally persuaded that a great Misfortune would befal 'em, if they violated the Publick Faith of the Calumet."

The French never wearied of extolling the wonderful influence of this symbol of brotherhood. Says Father Gravier, writing of his voyage down the Mississippi, in 1700: "No such honor is paid to the crowns and sceptres of kings as they pay to it. It seems to be the God of peace and war, the arbiter of life and death."



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Chapter XII

PIERRE ESPRIT RADISSON AND MEDARD CHOUART EXPLORE LAKE SUPERIOR