The friar in his long gray capote or hooded garment, which fell to his feet, girt about the waist by a rope called the cord of St. Francis, stood, with bare toes showing on his sandals, inclining his fat head with sympathy. He took out his handkerchief and wiped the old men's faces. Du Gay and Ako, in spite of the peril, laughed to see him daub the war paint.

"The good father hath no suspicion that these old wretches are dooming him to death," said Ako to Du Gay.

It appeared afterwards that this was what the ceremony meant. For several days the Frenchmen, carried northward in their captors' boats, expected to die. No calumet was smoked with them; and every night one of the old chiefs, named Aquipaguetin, who had lost a son in war and formed a particular intention of taking somebody's scalp for solace, sat by the prisoners stroking them and howling by the hour. One night when the Frenchmen were forced to make their fire at the end of the camp, Aquipaguetin sent word that he meant to finish them without more delay. But they gave him some goods out of the store La Salle had sent with them, and he changed his mind and concluded to wait awhile. He carried the bones of one of his dead relations, dried and wrapped in skins gaily ornamented with porcupine-quill work; and it was his custom to lay these bones before the tribe and request that everybody blow smoke on them. Of the Frenchmen, however, he demanded hatchets, beads, and cloth. This cunning old Sioux wanted to get all he could before the party reached their villages, where the spoil would be divided.

Nineteen days after their capture the prisoners were brought to a place which is now the site of St. Paul in the state of Minnesota, where the Sioux disbanded, scattering to their separate towns. They had finally smoked the peace-pipe with the Frenchmen; and now, fortunately without disagreement, portioned their white captives and distributed the goods. Father Hennepin was given to Aquipaguetin, who promptly adopted him as a son. The Flemish friar saw with disgust his gold-embroidered vestments, which a missionary always carried with him for the impressive celebration of mass, displayed on savage backs and greatly admired.

The explorers were really in the way of seeing as much of the upper Mississippi as they could desire. They were far north of the Wisconsin's mouth, where white men first entered the great river. The young Mississippi, clear as a mountain stream, gathered many small tributaries. St. Peter's joined it from a blue-earth channel. This rugged northern world was wonderfully beautiful, with valleys and heights and rocks and waterfalls.

The Sioux were tall, well-made Indians, and so active that the smaller Frenchmen could hardly keep up with them on the march. They sometimes carried Du Gay and Ako over streams, but the robust friar they forced to wade or swim; and when he lagged lame-footed with exhaustion across the prairies, they set fire to grass behind him, obliging him to take to his heels with them or burn. By adoption into the family of Aquipaguetin he had a large relationship thrust upon him, for the old weeper had many wives and children and other kindred. Hennepin indeed felt that he was not needed and might at any time be disposed of. He never had that confidence in his father Aquipaguetin which a son should repose in a parent.

He was separated from Ako and Du Gay, who were taken to other villages. By the time he reached father Aquepaguetin's house he was so exhausted, and his legs, cut by ice in the streams, were so swollen that he fell down on a bear robe. The village was on an island in a sheet of water afterwards called Lake Buade. Hennepin was kindly received by his new family, who fed him as well as they were able, for the Sioux had little food when they were not hunting. Seeing him so feeble, they gave him an Indian sweating bath, which he found good for his health. They made a lodge of skins so tight that it would hold heat, and put into it stones baked to a white heat. On these they poured water and shut Hennepin in the steam until he sweated freely.

The Sioux had two kinds of lodges—one somewhat resembling those of the Illinois, the other a cone of poles with skins stretched around, called a tepee.

Father Hennepin did little missionary work among these Indians. He suffered much from hunger, being a man who loved good cheer. But the tribes went on a buffalo hunt in July and killed plenty of meat. All that northern world was then clothed in vivid verdure. Honeysuckles and wild grapevines made the woods fragrant. The gentian, which jealously closes its blue-fringed cup from the human eye, grew close to the lakes. Captive though the Frenchmen were, they could not help enjoying the evening camp-fire with its weird flickerings against the dark of savage forests, the heat-lightning which heralded or followed storms, the waters, clear, as if filtered through icebergs, dashing in foam over mossy rocks.

They met during the buffalo hunt, and it was about this time that some "spirits," or white men, were heard of, coming from Lake Superior. These proved to be the great ranger Greysolon du Lhut and four other Frenchmen.

This man, cousin to Tonty, passed nearly his whole life in the woods, going from Indian town to Indian town, or planting outposts of his own in the wilderness. Occasionally he went to France, and the king's magnificence at Versailles was endured by him until he could gain some desired point from the colonial minister and hurry back. The government relied on him to keep lawless coureurs de bois within bounds, and he traded with nearly all the western tribes. When Greysolon du Lhut appeared, the Sioux treated their prisoners with deference; and from that time Hennepin, Du Gay, and Ako went where they pleased.

They seemed to have had no thought of returning to Fort Crevecoeur. In those days when each man took his individual life in his hands and guarded it in ways which seemed best to him, it was often expedient to change one's plan of action. About the time that Tonty was obliged to abandon Fort Crevecoeur, Hennepin and his companions set off eastward with Greysolon du Lhut's party. Hennepin sailed for France as soon as he could and wrote a book about his adventures. It was one of La Salle's misfortunes that this friar should finally even lay claim to discovering the mouth of the Mississippi, adding the glory of that to these real adventures on its upper waters.

The first of March, La Salle, with a number of the men he had gathered, started from Fort Miamis to the Illinois country. The prairies were one dazzling expanse of snow, and as the party slid along on the broad, flat snowshoes to which their feet were strapped, some of them were so blinded that the pain in their eyes became unendurable. These were obliged to camp in the edge of some woods, while the rest went on.

La Salle himself was sitting in darkness while the spring sun struck a million sparkles from a world yet locked in winter. The wind chilled his back, and he spread his hands to the camp blaze. In the torment of snow-blindness he wondered whether Tonty was treading these white wastes, seeking him, or lying dead of Indian wounds under the snow crust. The talk of the other snow-blinded men, sitting about or stretched with their feet to the fire, was lost on his ear. Yet his one faithful servant, who went with him on all his journeys, could not see anything but calm fortitude on his face as he lifted it at the approach of snowshoes.

"I cannot see you, Hunaut," said La Salle. "Did you find some pine leaves?"

"I found some, monsieur."

"Steep them as soon as you can for the men's eyes."

"I wish to tell you, monsieur," the man said as he went about his task with a snow-filled kettle, "that I found also a party of Fox Indians from Green Bay, and they gave me news of Monsieur de Tonty."

Hunaut looked at the long, pale face of his master and saw the under lip tremble and twitch.

"You know I am much bound to Monsieur de Tonty. Is he alive?"

"He is alive, monsieur. He has been obliged to pass the winter at Green Bay. Father Hennepin has also passed through that country on his way to Montreal."

La Salle felt his troubles melt with the unlocking of winter. The brief but agonizing snow-blindness passed away with a thaw; and, overtaking his other men, he soon met the returning Illinois tribe and began the Indian settlement around the rock he intended to fortify.

Already the Miami tribe was following him, and he drew them into an alliance with the Illinois, impressively founding the principality soon to grow there. This eloquent Norman Frenchman had gifts in height and the large bone and sinew of Normandy, which his Indian allies always admired. And he well knew where to impress his talk with coats, shirts, guns, and hunting-knives. As his holdings of land in Canada were made his stepping-stones toward the west, so the footing he gained at Fort Miamis and in the Illinois country was to be used in discovering the real course of the Mississippi and taking possession of its vast basin.

It was the end of May before he met Tonty at St. Ignace; Italian and Frenchman coming together with outstretched arms and embracing. Tonty's black eyes were full of tears, but La Salle told his reverses as calmly as if they were another man's.

"Any one else," said Father Membre, who stood by, "would abandon the enterprise, but Monsieur de la Salle has no equal for constancy of purpose."

"But where is Father Ribourde?" La Salle inquired, missing the other Recollet.

Tonty told him sorrowfully how Father Ribourde had gone into the woods when his party camped, after being driven up river in a leaky boat by the Iroquois; how they had waited and searched for him, and were finally made aware that a band of prowling Kickapoos had murdered him.

Tonty had aimed at Green Bay by the Chicago portage, and tramped along the west shore of Lake Michigan, having found it impossible to patch the boat.

"We were nearly starved," he said; "but we found a few ears of corn and some frozen squashes in a deserted Indian town. When we reached the bay we found an old canoe and mended it; but as soon as we were on the water there rose a northwest wind with driving snow, which lasted nearly five days. We ate all our food, and, not knowing what to do, turned back to the deserted town to die by a warm fire in one of the wigwams. On the way the bay froze. We camped to make moccasins out of Father Membre's cloak. I was angry at Etienne Renault for not finishing his; but he excused himself on account of illness, having a great oppression of the stomach, caused by eating a piece of an Indian rawhide shield which he could not digest. His delay proved our salvation, for the next day, as I was urging him to finish the moccasins, a party of Ottawas saw the smoke of our fire and came to us. We gave them such a welcome as never was seen before. They took us into their canoes and carried us to an Indian village only two leagues off. All the Indians took pleasure in sending us food; so, after thirty-four days of starvation, we found our famine turned to abundance."

Tonty and La Salle, with their followers, paddled the thousand miles to Fort Frontenac, to make another start into the wilderness.

La Salle was now determined to keep his men together. He set down many of his experiences and thoughts in letters which have been kept; so we know at this day what was in the great explorer's mind, and how dear he held "Monsieur de Tonty, who is full of zeal."

On his return to the wilderness with another equipment, he went around the head of Lake Michigan and made the short Chicago portage to the Desplaines River. Entering by this branch the frozen Illinois, they dragged their canoes on sledges past the site of the town and reached open water below Peoria Lake. La Salle gave up the plan of building a ship, and determined to go on in his canoes to the mouth of the Mississippi.

So, pausing to hunt when game was needed, his company of fifty-four persons entered the great river, saw the Missouri rushing into it—muddy current and clear northern stream flowing alongside until the waters mingled. They met and overawed the Indians on both shores, building several stockades. The broad river seemed to fill a valley, doubling and winding upon itself with innumerable curves, in its solemn and lonely stretches. Huge pieces of low-lying bank crumbled and fell in with splashes, for the Mississippi ceaselessly eats away its own shore.

A hundred leagues below the mouth of the Arkansas they came to a swamp on the west side. Behind this swamp, they had been told, might be found the Arkansas tribe's great town. La Salle sent Tonty and Father Membre, with some voyageurs, to make friends with the Indians and bring him word about the town.

Tonty had seen nothing like it in the New World. The houses were large and square, of sun-baked brick, with a dome of canes overhead. The two largest were the chief's house and the temple. Doors were the only openings. Tonty and the friar were taken in where the chief sat on a bedstead with his squaws, and sixty old men, in white mulberry bark cloaks, squatted by with the dignity of a council. The wives, in order to honor the sovereign, yelled.

The temple was a place where dead chiefs' bones were kept. A mud wall built around it was ornamented with skulls. The inside was very rough. Something like an altar stood in the center of the floor; and a fire of logs was kept burning before it, and never allowed to go out, filling the place with smoke, and irritating the eyes of two old Indians who tended it in half darkness. The Frenchmen were not allowed to look into a secret place where the temple treasure was kept. But, hearing it consisted of pearls and trinkets, Tonty conjectured the Indians had got it from the Spanish. This tribe was not unlike the Aztecs of Mexico. The chief came in barbaric grandeur to visit La Salle, dressed in white, having fans carried before him, and a plate of burnished copper to represent the sun, for these lower Mississippians were sun-worshipers.

With gifts and the grave consideration which instantly won Indians, La Salle moved from tribe to tribe towards the Gulf. Red River pulsed upon the course like a discharging artery. The sluggish alligator woke from the ooze and poked up his snout at the canoes. "He is," says a quaint old writer who made that journey afterwards, "the most frightful master-fish that can be seen. I saw one that was as large as half a hogshead. There are some, they say, as large as a hogshead and twelve to fifteen feet long. I have no doubt they would swallow up a man if they caught him."



In April La Salle reached his goal. He found that the Mississippi divided its current into three strands and entered the Gulf through three mouths. He separated his party; La Salle took the west passage, and Tonty and another lieutenant the middle and the east. At the Gulf of Mexico they came together again, and with solemn ceremonies claimed for France all the country along the great river's entire length, and far eastward and westward, calling it Louisiana, in honor of King Louis XIV. A metal plate, bearing the arms of France, the king's name, and the date of the discovery, was fixed on a pillar in the shifting soil.

Hardy as he was, La Salle sometimes fell ill from the great exposures he endured. And more than once he was poisoned by some revengeful voyageur. It was not until the December following his discovery of the Mississippi's mouth that he realized his plan of fortifying the rock on the Illinois River. He and Tonty delighted in it, calling it Fort St. Louis of the Illinois. Storehouses and quarters for a garrison rose around its edges, protected by a palisade. A windlass was rigged to draw water from the river below. On the northeast corner of the rock a low earthwork remains to this day.

Around this natural castle the Indian tribes gathered to La Salle, as to a sovereign,—Miamis, Abenakis, and Shawanoes, from countries eastward, and the Illinois returned to spread over their beloved meadow. Instead of one town, many towns of log, or rush, or bark lodges could be seen from the summit of the Rock. Years afterwards the French still spoke of this fortress as Le Rocher. A little principality of twenty thousand inhabitants, strong enough to repel any attack of the Iroquois, thus helped to guard it. La Salle meant to supply his people with goods and give them a market for their furs. At this time he could almost see the success of his mighty enterprise assured; he could reasonably count on strengthening his stockades along the Mississippi, and on building near its mouth a city which would protect the entire west and give an outlet to the undeveloped wealth of the continent.



In the flush of his discovery and success La Salle went back to France, leaving Tonty in charge of the Rock and the gathering Indian nations, and laid his actual achievements before the king, asking for help. This was made necessary by the change in the colonial government, which had removed his friend Count Frontenac and left him at the mercy of enemies.

The king was not slow to see the capacity of this wonderful man, so shy of civilization that he lodged in a poor street, carrying with him the very breath of the wilderness. La Salle asked for two ships; the king gave him four; and many people and supplies were gathered to colonize and stock the west.

It was La Salle's intention to sail by way of the West Indies, cross the Gulf of Mexico, and enter the mouth of the Mississippi. But the Gulf of Mexico is rimmed with low marshy land, and he had never seen the mouth of the Mississippi from seaward. His unfamiliarity with the coast, or night, or fog cheated him of his destination, and the colony was landed four hundred miles west of it, in a place called Matagorda Bay, in Texas, which then belonged to the Spaniards. Although at the time of discovery he had taken the latitude of that exact spot where he set the post, he had been unable to determine the longitude; any lagoon might be an opening of the triple mouth he sought.

La Salle's brother, a priest, who sailed with him on this voyage, testified afterwards that the explorer died believing he was near the mouth of the Mississippi. Whatever may have been his thoughts, the undespairing Norman grappled with his troubles in the usual way. One of his vessels had been captured by the Spanish. Another had been wrecked in the bay by seamen who were willing to injure him. These contained supplies most needed for the colony. The third sailed away and left him; and his own little ship, a gift of the king for his use along the coast, was sunk by careless men while he was absent searching northward for the Mississippi.

Many of the colonists fell sick and died. Men turned sullen and tried to desert. Some went hunting and were never seen again. Indians, who dare not openly attack, skulked near and set the prairie on fire; and that was a sight of magnificence, the earth seeming to burn like a furnace, or, far as the eye could follow them, billows of flame rushing as across a fire sea. But La Salle was wise, and cut the grass close around his powder and camp.



Water, plains, trees combined endlessly, like the pieces of a kaleidoscope, to confuse him in his search. Tonty was not at hand to take care of the colony while he groped for the lost river. He moved his wretched people from their camp, with all goods saved off the wreck in the bay, to a better site for a temporary fort, on rising ground. The carpenters proved good for nothing. La Salle himself planned buildings and marked out mortises on the logs. First a large house roofed with hides, and divided into apartments, was finished to shelter all. Separate houses were afterwards built for the women and girls, and barracks or rougher cells for the men. A little chapel was finally added. And when high-pointed palisades surrounded the whole, La Salle, perhaps thinking of his invincible rock on the Illinois and the faithfulness of his copper-handed lieutenant guarding it, called this outpost also Fort St. Louis. Cannon were mounted at the four corners of the large house. As the balls were lost, they were loaded with bullets in bags.

Behind, the prairies stretched away to forests. In front rolled the bay, with the restless ever-heaving motion of the Mexican Gulf. A delicious salty air, like the breath of perpetual spring, blew in, tingling the skin of the sulkiest adventurer with delight in this virgin world. Fierce northers must beat upon the colonists, and the languors of summer must in time follow; and they were homesick, always watching for sails. Yet they had no lack of food. Oysters were so plentiful in the bay that they could not wade without cutting their feet with the shells. Though the alligator pushed his ugly snout and ridgy back out of lagoons, and horned frogs frightened the children, and the rattlesnake was to be avoided where it lay coiled in the grass, game of all kinds abounded. Every man was obliged to hunt, and every woman and child to help smoke the meat. Even the priests took guns in their hands. Father Membre had brought some buffalo traditions from the Illinois country. He was of Father Hennepin's opinion that this wild creature might be trained to draw the plow, and he had faith that benevolence was concealed behind its wicked eyes.

As Father Membre stalked along the prairie with the hunters, his capote tucked up out of his way on its cord, one of the men shot a buffalo and it dropped. The buffaloes rarely fell at once, even when wounded to death, unless hit in the spine. Father Membre approached it curiously.

"Come back, Father!" shouted the hunters.

Father Membre touched it gently with his gun.

"Run, Father, run!" cried the hunters.

"It is dead," asserted Father Membre. "I will rest my gun across its carcass to steady my aim at the other buffaloes."

He knelt to rest his gun across its back.

The great beast heaved convulsively to its feet and made a dash at the Recollet. It sent him revolving heels over head. But Father Membre got up, and, spreading his capote in both hands, danced in front of the buffalo to head it off from escaping. At that, with a bellow, the shaggy creature charged over him across the prairie, dropping to its knees and dying before the frightened hunters could lift the friar from the ground.

"Are you hurt, Father?" they all asked, supporting him, and finding it impossible to keep from laughing as he sat up, with his reverend face skinned and his capote nearly torn off.

"Not unto death," responded Father Membre, brushing grass and dirty hoof prints from his garment. "But it hath been greatly impressed on my mind that this ox-savage is no fit beast for the plow. Nor will I longer counsel our women to coax the wild cows to a milking. It is well to adapt to our needs the beasts of a country," said Father Membre, wiping blood from his face. "But this buffalo creature hath disappointed me!"

La Salle was prostrated through the month of November. But by Christmas he was able to set out on a final search from which he did not intend to return until he found the Mississippi. All hands in the fort were busied on the outfit necessary for the party. Clothes were made of sails recovered from one of the wrecked vessels. Eighteen men were to follow La Salle, among them his elder brother, the Abbe Cavelier. Some had on the remains of garments they had worn in France, and others were dressed in deer or buffalo skins. He had bought five horses of the Indians to carry the baggage.

At midnight on Christmas Eve everybody crowded into the small fortress chapel. The priests, celebrating mass, moved before the altar in such gold-embroidered vestments as they had, and the light of torches illuminated the rough log walls. Those who were to stay and keep the outpost, literally lost in the wilderness, were on their knees weeping. Those who were to go knelt also, with the dread of an awful uncertainty in their minds. The faithful ones foresaw worse than peril from forests and waters and savages, for La Salle could not leave behind all the villains with whom he was obliged to serve himself. He alone showed the composure of a man who never despairs. If he had positively known that he was setting out upon a fatal journey,—that he was undertaking his last march through the wilderness,—the mass lights would still have shown the firm face of a man who did not turn back from any enterprise. The very existence of these people who had come out to the New World with him depended on his success. Whatever lay in the road he had to encounter it. The most splendid lives may progress and end through what we call tragedy; but it is better to die in the very stress of achievement than to stretch a poor existence through a century. The contagion of his hardihood stole out like the Christmas incense and spread through the chapel.



V.

FRENCH SETTLEMENTS.

"It was the establishment of military posts throughout this vast valley that eventually brought on a life struggle between the English and the French," says a historian.

At first the only spot of civilization in boundless wilderness was Tonty's little fort on the Illinois. Protected by it, the Indians went hunting and brought in buffalo skins and meat; their women planted and reaped maize; children were born; days came and went; autumn haze made the distances pearly; winter snow lay on the wigwams; men ran on snowshoes; and papooses shouted on the frozen river. Still no news came from La Salle.



Tonty had made a journey to the mouth of the Mississippi to meet him, after he landed with his colony, searching thirty leagues in each direction along the coast. La Salle was at that time groping through a maze of lagoons in Texas. Tonty, with his men, waded swamps to their necks, enduring more suffering than he had ever endured in his life before. This was in February of the year 1686. Finding it impossible to reach La Salle, who must be wandering somewhere on the Gulf of Mexico, Tonty wrote a letter to him, intrusting it to the hands of an Indian chief, with directions that it be delivered when the explorer appeared. He also left a couple of men who were willing to wait in the Arkansas villages to meet La Salle.

Two years passed before those men brought positive proof of the undespairing Norman's fate. The remnant of the party that started with La Salle from Fort St. Louis of Texas spent one winter at Fort St. Louis of the Illinois, bringing word that they had left their leader in good health on the coast. The Abbe Cavelier even collected furs in his brother's name, and went on to France, carrying his secret with him.

La Salle had been assassinated on the Trinity River, soon after setting out on his last determined search for the Mississippi. The eighteenth day of March, 1687, some of his brutal voyageurs hid themselves in bushes and shot him.

So slowly did events move then, and so powerless was man, an atom in the wilderness, that the great-hearted Italian, weeping aloud in rage and grief, realized that La Salle's bones had been bleaching a year and a half before the news of his death reached his lieutenant. It was not known that La Salle received burial. The wretches who assassinated him threw him into some brush. It was a satisfaction to Tonty that they all perished miserably afterwards; those who survived quarrels among themselves being killed by the Indians.

The undespairing Norman died instantly, without feeling or admitting defeat. And he was not defeated. Though his colony—including Father Membre, who had been so long with him—perished by the hands of the Indians in Texas, in spite of Tonty's second journey to relieve them, his plan of settlements from the great lakes to the mouth of the Mississippi became a reality.

Down from Canada came two of the eleven Le Moyne brothers, D'Iberville and Bienville, fine fighting sons of a powerful colonial family, with royal permission to found near the great river's mouth that city which had been La Salle's dream. Fourteen years after La Salle's death, while D'Iberville was exploring for a site, the old chief, to whom Tonty had given a letter for La Salle, brought it carefully wrapped and delivered it into the hands of La Salle's more fortunate successor.

Tonty was associated with Le Moyne D'Iberville in these labors around the Gulf.



A long peninsula betwixt the Mississippi and Kaskaskia Rivers, known since as the American Bottom, lured away Indians from the great town on the Illinois. The new settlement founded on this peninsula was called Kaskaskia, for one of the tribes. As other posts sprung into existence, Fort St. Louis was less needed. "As early as 1712," we are told, "land titles were issued for a common field in Kaskaskia. Traders had already opened a commerce in skins and furs with the remote post of Isle Dauphine in Mobile Bay." Settlements were firmly established. By 1720 the luxuries of Europe came into the great tract taken by La Salle in the name of King Louis and called Louisiana.

Twelve years after La Salle's death a missionary named St. Cosme (Sant' Come) journeyed from Canada in a party guided by Tonty. St. Cosme has left this record of the man with the copper hand:—

"He guided us as far as the Arkansas and gave us much pleasure on the way, winning friendship of some savages and intimidating others who from jealousy or desire to plunder opposed the voyage; not only doing the duty of a brave man but that of a missionary. He quieted the voyageurs, by whom he was generally loved, and supported us by his example in devotion."

On the Chicago portage a little boy, given to the missionary perhaps because he was an orphan and the western country offered him the best chances in life, started eagerly ahead, though he was told to wait. The rest of the party, having goods and canoes to carry from the Chicago River to the Desplaines, lost sight of him, and he was never seen again. Autumn grass grew tall over the marshy portage, but they dared not set it afire, though his fate was doubtless hidden in that grass. The party divided and searched for him, calling and firing guns. Three days they searched, and daring to wait no longer, for it was November and the river ready to glaze with ice, they left him to some French people at the post of Chicago. But the child was not found. He disappeared and no one ever knew what became of him.

Like this is Henri de Tonty's disappearance from history. The records show him working with Le Moyne D'Iberville and Le Moyne de Bienville to found New Orleans and Mobile, pushing the enterprises which La Salle had begun. He has been blamed with the misbehavior of a relative of his, Alphonse de Tonty, who got into disgrace at the post of Detroit. Little justice has been done to the memory of this man, who should not be forgotten in the west. So quietly did he slip out of life that his burial place is unknown. Some people believe that he came back to the Rock long after its buildings were dismantled and it had ceased to be Fort St. Louis of the Illinois. Others say he died in Mobile. But it is probable that both La Salle and Tonty left their bodies to the wilderness which their invincible spirits had conquered.

After the settlement of Kaskaskia a strong fortress was built sixteen miles above, on the same side of the Mississippi. The king of France spent a million crowns strengthening this place, which was called Fort Chartres. Its massive walls, inclosing four acres, and its buildings and arched gateway were like some medieval stronghold strangely transplanted from the Old World. White uniformed troops paraded. A village sprang up around it. Fort Chartres was the center of government until Kaskaskia became the first capital of the Illinois territory. Applications for land had to be made at this post. Indians on the Mississippi, for it was a little distance from the shore, heard drumbeat and sunset gun, and were proud of going in and out of its mighty gateway under the white flag of France.

Other villages began on the eastern bank of the river—Cahokia, opposite the present city of St. Louis, and Prairie du Rocher, nearer Kaskaskia. Ste. Genevieve also was built in what is now the state of Missouri, on land which then was claimed by the Spaniards. There was a Post of Natchitoches on the Red River, as well as a Post of Washita on the Washita River. Settlements were also founded upon La Fourche and Fausse Riviere above New Orleans.

"The finest country we have seen," wrote one of the adventurers in those days, "is all from Chicago to the Tamaroas. It is nothing but prairie and clumps of wood as far as you can see. The Tamaroas are eight leagues from the Illinois." Chicago was a landing place and portage from the great lakes long before a stockade with a blockhouse was built called Fort Dearborn.

"Monjolly," wrote the same adventurer, "or Mount Jolliet, is a mound of earth on the prairie on the right side of the Illinois River as you go down, elevated about thirty feet. The Indians say at the time of the great deluge one of their ancestors escaped, and this little mountain is his canoe which he turned over there."

La Salle had learned from the Iroquois about the Ohio River. But the region through which it flowed to the Mississippi remained for a long while an unbroken wilderness. The English settlements on their strip of Atlantic coast, however, and the French settlements in the west, reached gradually out over this territory and met and grappled. Whichever power got and kept the mastery of the west would get the mastery of the continent.

The territory of Kentucky, like that of Michigan, was owned by no tribe of Indians. "It was the common hunting and fighting ground of Ohio tribes on the north and Cherokees and Chickasaws on the south."

There was indeed one exception to the uninhabited state of all that land stretching betwixt the Alleghanies and the Mississippi. Vincennes, now a town of Indiana, was, after Kaskaskia, the oldest place in the west. This isolated post is said to have been founded by French soldiers and emigrants. Five thousand acres were devoted to the common field. De Vincennes, for whom it was named, was a nephew of Louis Jolliet. And while it is not at all certain that he founded the post, he doubtless sojourned there in the Indiana country during his roving life. A small stockade on the site of the town of Fort Wayne is said to have been built by him.

French settlements began to extend southward from Lake Erie to the head waters of the Ohio, like a chain to check the English. Presqu' Isle, now Erie, Pennsylvania, was founded about the same time as Vincennes.

A French settler built his house in an inclosure of two or three acres. The unvarying model was one story high, with porches or galleries surrounding it. Wooden walls were filled and daubed with a solid mass of what was called cat-and-clay, a mixture of mortar and chopped straw or Spanish moss. The chimney was of the same materials, shaped by four long corner posts, wide apart below, and nearer together at the top.

As fast as children grew up and married they built their cottages in their father's yard; and so it went on, until with children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, a small village accumulated around one old couple.

The French were not anxious to obtain grants of the rich wild land. Every settlement had its common field, large or small, as was desired. A portion of this field was given to each person in the village for his own, and he was obliged to cultivate it and raise food for his family. If a man neglected his ground, it was taken from him. A large tract of land called the common pasture was also inclosed for everybody's cattle to graze in.

Sometimes houses were set facing one court, or center, like a camp, for defense. But generally the French had little trouble with their savage neighbors, who took very kindly to them. The story of western settlement is not that dreadful story of continual wars with Indians which reddens the pages of eastern colonies. The French were gay people. They loved to dance and hunt and spend their time in amusements. While the serious, stubborn English were grubbing out the foundations of great states on the Atlantic coast, it must be confessed these happy folks cared little about developing the rich Mississippi valley.

During all its early occupation this hospitable land abounded with game. Though in November the buffaloes became so lean that only their tongues were eaten, swans, geese, and ducks were always plentiful, and the fish could not be exhausted.

On a day in February, people from Kaskaskia hurried over the road which then stretched a league to the Mississippi, for the town was on the Kaskaskia River bank. There were settlers in blanket capotes, shaped like friars' frocks, with hoods to draw over their heads. If it had been June instead of February, a blue or red kerchief would have covered the men's heads. The dress of an ordinary frontiersman in those days consisted of shirt, breech-cloth, and buckskin leggins, with moccasins, and neips, or strips of blanket wrapped around the feet for stockings. The voyageur so equipped could undertake any hardship. But in the settlements wooden shoes were worn instead of moccasins, and garments of texture lighter than buckskin. The women wore short gowns, or long, full jackets, and petticoats; and their moccasins were like those of squaws, ornamented with beautiful quill-work. Their outer wraps were not unlike the men's; so a multitude of blanket capotes flocked toward the Mississippi bank, which at that time had not been washed away, and rose steeply above the water. They had all run to see a procession of boats pass by from Fort Chartres.

A little negro had brought the news that the boats were in sight. Black slaves were owned by some of the French; and Indian slaves, sold by their captors to the settlers, had long been members of these patriarchal households. Many of them had left their work to follow their masters to the river; the negroes pointing and shouting, the Indians standing motionless and silent.

The sun flecked a broad expanse of water, and down this shining track rushed a fleet of canoes; white uniforms leading, and brick-colored heads above dusky-fringed buckskins following close after. This little army waved their hands and fired guns to salute the crowd on shore. The crowd all jangled voices in excited talk, no man listening to what another said.

"See you—there are Monsieur Pierre D'Artaguette and the Chevalier De Vincennes and excellent Father Senat in the first boat."

"The young St. Ange and Sieur Lalande follow them."

"How many of our good Indians have thrown themselves into this expedition! The Chickasaw nation may howl when they see this array! They will be taught to leave the boats from New Orleans alone!"

"But suppose Sieur De Bienville and his army do not meet the Commandant D'Artaguette when he reaches the Chickasaw country?"

"During his two years at Fort Chartres has Sieur D'Artaguette made mistakes? The expedition will succeed."

"The saints keep that beautiful boy!—for to look at him, though he is so hardy, Monsieur Pierre D'Artaguette is as handsome as a woman. I have heard the southern tribes sacrifice their own children to the sun. This is a fair company of Christians to venture against such devils."

The Chickasaws, occupying a tract of country now stretching across northern Mississippi and western Tennessee, were friendly to the English and willing to encroach on the French. They interrupted river traffic and practiced every cruelty on their prisoners. D'Artaguette knew as well as the early explorers that in dealing with savages it is a fatal policy to overlook or excuse their ill-behavior. They themselves believed in exact revenge, and despised a foe who did not strike back, their insolence becoming boundless if not curbed. So he had planned with Le Moyne de Bienville a concerted attack on these allies of the English. Bienville, bringing troops up river from New Orleans, was to meet him in the Chickasaw country on a day and spot carefully specified.



The brilliant pageant of canoes went on down the river, seeming to grow smaller, until it dwindled to nothingness in the distance.

But in the course of weeks only a few men came back, sent by the Chickasaws, to tell about the fate of their leaders. The troops from New Orleans did not keep the appointment, arriving too late and then retreating. D'Artaguette, urged by his Indians, made the attack with such force as he had, and his brave array was destroyed. He and the Chevalier Vincennes, with Laland, Father Senat, and many others, a circle of noble human torches, perished at the stake. People lamented aloud in Kaskaskia and Cahokia streets, and the white flag of France slipped down to half-mast on Fort Chartres.

This victory made the Chickasaw Indians so bold that scarcely a French convoy on the river escaped them. There is a story that a young girl reached the gate of Fort Chartres, starving and in rags, from wandering through swamps and woods. She was the last of a family arrived from France, and sought her sister, an officer's wife, in the fort. The Chickasaws had killed every other relative; she, escaping alone, was ready to die of exposure when she saw the flag through the trees.

But another captain of Fort Chartres, no bolder than young Pierre D'Artaguette, but more fortunate, named Neyon de Villiers, twenty years afterwards led troops as far east as the present state of Pennsylvania, and helped his brother, Coulon de Villiers, continue the struggle betwixt French and English by defeating, at Fort Necessity, the English commanded by a young Virginia officer named George Washington.



VI.

THE LAST GREAT INDIAN.

The sound of the Indian drum was heard on Detroit River, and humid May night air carried it a league or more to the fort. All the Pottawatomies and Wyandots were gathered from their own villages on opposite shores to the Ottawas on the south bank, facing Isle Cochon. Their women and children squatted about huge fires to see the war dance. The river strait, so limpidly and transparently blue in daytime, that dipping a pailful of it was like dipping a pailful of the sky, scarcely glinted betwixt darkened woods.

In the center of an open space, which the camp-fires were built to illuminate, a painted post was driven into the ground, and the warriors formed a large ring around it. Their moccasined feet kept time to the booming of the drums. With a flourish of his hatchet around his head, a chief leaped into the ring and began to chase an imaginary foe, chanting his own deeds and those of his forefathers. He was a muscular rather than a tall Indian, with high, striking features. His dark skin was colored by war paint, and he had stripped himself of everything but ornaments. Ottawa Indians usually wore brilliant blankets, while Wyandots of Sandusky and Detroit paraded in painted shirts, their heads crowned with feathers, and their leggins tinkling with little bells. The Ojibwas, or Chippewas, of the north carried quivers slung on their backs, holding their arrows.

The dancer in the ring was the Ottawa chief, Pontiac, a man at that time fifty years old, who had brought eighteen savage nations under his dominion, so that they obeyed his slightest word. With majestic sweep of the limbs he whirled through the pantomime of capturing and scalping an enemy, struck the painted post with his tomahawk, and raised the awful war whoop. His young braves stamped and yelled with him. Another leaped into the ring, sung his deeds, and struck the painted post, warrior after warrior following, until a wild maze of sinewy figures swam and shrieked around it. Blazing pine knots stuck in the ground helped to show this maddened whirl, the very opposite of the peaceful, floating calumet dance. Boy papooses, watching it, yelled also, their black eyes kindling with full desire to shed blood.

Perhaps no Indian there, except Pontiac, understood what was beginning with the war dance on that May night of the year 1763. He had been laying his plans all winter, and sending huge black and purple wampum belts of war, and hatchets dipped in red, to rouse every native tribe. All the Algonquin stock and the Senecas of the Iroquois were united with him. From the small oven-shaped hut on Isle Cochon, where he lived with his squaws and children, to Michilimackinac, from Michilimackinac to the lower Mississippi, and from the eastern end of Lake Erie down to the Ohio, the messengers of this self-made emperor had secretly carried and unfolded his plan, which was to rise and attack all the English forts on the same day, and then to destroy all the English settlers, sparing no white people but the French.

Two years before, an English army had come over to Canada and conquered it. That was a deathblow to French settlements in the middle west. They dared no longer resist English colonists pushing on them from the east. All that chain of forts stretching from Lake Erie down to the Ohio—Presqu' Isle, Le Boeuf, Venango, Ligonier—had been given up to the English, as well as western posts—Detroit, Fort Miami, Ouatanon on the Wabash, and Michilimackinac. The settlements on the Mississippi, however, still displayed the white flag of France. So large was the dominion in the New World which England now had the right to claim, that she was unable to grasp it all at once.



The Indians did not like the English, who treated them with contempt, would not offer them presents, and put them in danger of starvation by holding back the guns and ammunition, on which they had learned to depend, instead of their bows and arrows. For two years they had borne the rapid spread of English settlements on land which they still regarded as their own. These intruders were not like the French, who cared nothing about claiming land, and were always ready to hunt or dance with their red brethren.

All the tribes were, therefore, eager to rise against the English, whom they wanted to drive back into the sea. Pontiac himself knew this could not be done; but he thought it possible, by striking the English forts all at once, to restore the French power and so get the French to help him in fighting back their common foe from spreading into the west.

Pontiac was the only Indian who ever seemed to realize all the dangers which threatened his race, or to have military skill for organizing against them. His work had been secret, and he had taken pains to appear very friendly to the garrison of Detroit, who were used to the noise of Indian yelling and dancing. This fort was the central point of his operations, and he intended to take it next morning by surprise.

Though La Motte Cadillac was the founder of a permanent settlement on the west shore of Detroit River, it is said that Greysolon du Lhut set up the first palisades there. About a hundred houses stood crowded together within the wooden wall of these tall log pickets, which were twenty-five feet high. The houses were roofed with bark or thatched with straw. The streets were mere paths, but a wide road went all around the town next to the palisades. Detroit was almost square in shape, with a bastion, or fortified projection, at each corner, and a blockhouse built over each gate. The river almost washed the front palisades, and two schooners usually anchored near to protect the fort and give it communication with other points. Besides the homes of settlers, it contained barracks for soldiers, a council-house, and a little church.

About a hundred and twenty English soldiers, besides fur traders and Canadian settlers, were in this inclosure, which was called the fort, to distinguish it from the village of French houses up and down the shore. Dwellers outside had their own gardens and orchards, also surrounded by pickets. These French people, who tried to live comfortably among the English, whom they liked no better than the Indians did, raised fine pears and apples and made wine of the wild grapes.

The river, emptying the water of the upper lakes into Lake Erie, was about half a mile wide. Sunlight next morning showed this blue strait sparkling from the palisades to the other shore, and trees and gardens moist with that dewy breath which seems to exhale from fresh-water seas. Indians swarmed early around the fort, pretending that the young men were that day going to play a game of ball in the fields, while Pontiac and sixty old chiefs came to hold a council with the English. More than a thousand of them lounged about, ready for action. The braves were blanketed, each carrying a gun with its barrel filed off short enough to be concealed under his blanket.

About ten o'clock Pontiac and his chiefs crossed the river in birch canoes and stalked in Indian file, every man stepping in the tracks of the man before him, to the fort gates. The gates on the water side usually stood open until evening, for the English, contemptuously careless of savages, let squaws and warriors come and go at pleasure. They did not that morning open until Pontiac entered. He found himself and his chiefs walking betwixt files of armed soldiers. The gates were shut behind him.

Pontiac was startled as if by a sting. He saw that some one had betrayed his plan to the officers. Even fur traders were standing under arms. To this day it is not known who secretly warned the fort of Pontiac's conspiracy; but the most reliable tradition declares it to have been a young squaw named Catherine, who could not endure to see friends whom she loved put to death.

It flashed through Pontiac's mind that he and his followers were now really prisoners. The captain of Detroit was afterwards blamed for not holding the chief when he had him. The tribes could not rush through the closed gates at Pontiac's signal, which was to be the lifting of a wampum belt upside down, with all its figures reversed. But the cunning savage put on a look of innocence and inquired:—

"My father," using the Indian term of respect, "why are so many of your young men standing in the street with their guns?"

"They have been ordered out for exercise and discipline," answered the officer.

A slight clash of arms and the rolling of drums were heard by the surprised tribes waiting in suspense around the palisades. They did not know whether they would ever see their leader appear again. But he came out, after going through the form of a council, mortified by his failure to seize the fort, and sulkily crossed the river to his lodge. All his plans to bring warriors inside the palisades were treated with contempt by the captain of Detroit. Pontiac wanted his braves to smoke the calumet with his English father.

"You may come in yourself," said the officer, "but the crowd you have with you must remain outside."

"I want all my young men," urged Pontiac, "to enjoy the fragrance of the friendly calumet."

"I will have none of your rabble in the fort," said the officer.

Raging like a wild beast, Pontiac then led his people in assault. He threw off every pretense of friendliness, and from all directions the tribes closed around Detroit in a general attack. Though it had wooden walls, it was well defended. The Indians, after their first fierce onset, fighting in their own way, behind trees and sheltered by buildings outside the fort, were able to besiege the place indefinitely with comparatively small loss to themselves; while the garrison, shut in almost without warning, looked forward to scarcity of provisions.

All English people caught beyond the walls were instantly murdered. But the French settlers were allowed to go about their usual affairs unhurt. Queer traditions have come down from them of the pious burial they gave to English victims of the Indians. One old man stuck his hands out of his grave. The French covered them with earth. But next time they passed that way they saw the stiff, entreating hands, like pale fungi, again thrust into view. At this the horrified French settlers hurried to their priest, who said the neglected burial service over the grave, and so put the poor Englishman to rest, for his hands protruded no more.

One of the absent schooners kept for the use of the fort had gone down river with letters and dispatches. Her crew knew nothing of the siege, and she narrowly escaped capture. A convoy of boats, bringing the usual spring supplies, was taken, leaving Detroit to face famine. Yet it refused to surrender, and, in spite of Pontiac's rage and his continual investment of the place, the red flag of England floated over that fortress all summer.

Other posts were not so fortunate in resisting Pontiac's conspiracy. Fort Sandusky, at the west end of Lake Erie; Fort Ouatanon, on the Wabash, a little south of where Lafayette, in the state of Indiana, now stands; Fort Miami, Presqu' Isle, Le Boeuf, Venango, on the eastern border, and Michilimackinac, on the straits, were all taken by the Indians.

At Presqu' Isle the twenty-seven soldiers went into the blockhouse of the fort and prepared to hold it, lining and making it bullet-proof.

A blockhouse was built of logs, or very thick timber, and had no windows, and but one door in the lower story. The upper story projected several feet all around, and had loopholes in the overhanging, floor, through which the men could shoot down. Loopholes were also fixed in the upper walls, wide within, but closing to narrow slits on the outside. A sentry box or lookout was sometimes put at the top of the roof. With the door barred by iron or great beams of wood, and food and ammunition stored in the lower room, men could ascend a ladder to the second story of a blockhouse and hold it against great odds, if the besiegers did not succeed in burning them out.

Presqu' Isle was at the edge of Lake Erie, and the soldiers brought in all the water they could store. But the attacking Indians made breastworks of logs, and shot burning arrows on the shingle roof. All the water barrels were emptied putting out fires. While some men defended the loopholes, others dug under the floor of the blockhouse and mined a way below ground to the well in the fort where Indians swarmed. Buildings in the inclosure were set on fire, but the defenders of the blockhouse kept it from catching the flames by tearing off shingles from the roof when they began to burn. The mining party reached the well, and buckets of water were drawn up and passed through the tunnel to the blockhouse. Greatly exhausted, the soldiers held out until next day, when, having surrendered honorably, they were all taken prisoners as they left the scorched and battered log tower. For savages were such capricious and cruel victors that they could rarely be depended upon to keep faith. Pontiac himself was superior to his people in such matters. If he had been at Presqu' Isle, the garrison would not have been seized after surrendering on honorable terms. However, these soldiers were not instantly massacred, as other prisoners had been in war betwixt French and English, when savage allies could not be restrained.

Next to Detroit the most important post was Michilimackinac.

This was not the island in the straits bearing that name, but a stockaded fort on the south shore of Michigan, directly across the strait from St. Ignace. To this day, searching along a beach of deep, yielding sand, so different from the rocky strands of the islands, you may find at the forest edge a cellar where the powder house stood, and fruit trees and gooseberry bushes from gardens planted there more than two hundred years ago.

Michilimackinac, succeeding St. Ignace, had grown in importance, and was now a stockaded fort, having French houses both within and outside it, like Detroit. After Father Marquette's old mission had been abandoned and the buildings burned, another small mission was begun at L'Arbre Croche, not far west of Fort Michilimackinac, such of his Ottawas as were not scattered being gathered here. The region around also was full of Chippewas or Ojibwas.

All these Indians hated the English. Some came to the fort and said to a young English trader named Alexander Henry, who arrived after the white flag was hauled down and the red one about to be hoisted:—

"Englishman, although you have conquered the French, you have not conquered us. We are not your slaves. These lakes, these woods and mountains were left to us by our ancestors. They are our inheritance, and we will part with them to none!"

Though these Ottawas and Chippewas were independent of those about Detroit, they had eagerly taken hold of Pontiac's war belt. The missionary priest was able for a while to restrain the Ottawas. The Chippewas, gathered in from their winter's hunting, determined to strike the first blow.

On the fourth day of June, which was the English king's birthday, they came and invited the garrison to look at a game of ball, or baggattaway, which they were going to play on the long sandy beach, against some Sac Indians. The fortress gates stood open. The day was very warm and discipline was relaxed. Nobody noticed that squaws, flocking inside the fort, had tomahawks and scalping knives hidden under their blankets, though a few Englishmen afterward remembered that the squaws were strangely huddled in wrappings on a day hot for that climate.

The young English trader, Alexander Henry, has left a careful account of the massacre at Fort Michilimackinac. He did not go out to see the ball game, because he had important letters to write and send by a canoe just starting to Canada. Officers and men, believing the red tribes friendly, lounged about unarmed. Whitewashed French houses shone in the sun, and the surge of the straits sounded peacefully on the beach. Nobody could dream that when the shouting Indians drove the ball back from the farthest stake, their cries would suddenly change to war whoops.

At that horrid yell Henry sprang up and ran to a window of his house. He saw Chippewas filling the fort, and with weapons snatched from the squaws, cutting down and scalping Englishmen. He caught his own gun from its rack, expecting to hear the drum beat to arms. But the surprised garrison were unable even to sound an alarm.

Seeing that not a Frenchman was touched, Henry slipped into the house of his next neighbor, a Canadian named Langlade. The whole family were at the front windows, looking at the horrible sights in the fort; but an Indian slave, a Pani, or Pawnee woman, beckoned to him and hid him in the attic, locking the door and carrying away the key.

The attic probably had one or two of those tunnel-like dormer windows built in the curving roof of all French houses. Henry found a place where he could look out. He saw his countrymen slaughtered without being able to help them, and it was like a frightful nightmare from which there was to be no awakening. Presently the cry rose:—

"All is finished!"

Then the Indians crowded into Langlade's house and inquired whether any Englishmen were hid there. So thin was the attic floor of planks laid across joists, that Henry could hear every word.

"I cannot say," answered the Frenchman. "You may examine for yourselves."

Henry looked around the attic for some place to hide in. Moccasined feet were already coming upstairs. Savage hands shook the attic door, and impatient guttural voices demanded the key. While some one went for the key, Henry crept into a kind of tunnel made by a heap of birch-bark vessels, used in the maple-sugar season. The door was opening before he could draw himself quite out of sight, and though the pile was in a dark corner, he dreaded displacing some of the birch troughs and making a noise.

The Indians trod so close to him he thought they must hear him breathe. Their bodies were smeared with blood, which could be seen through the dusk; and while searching they told Monsieur Langlade how many Englishmen they had killed and the number of scalps they had taken.

Not finding any one, they went away and the door was again locked. Henry crept out of hiding. There was a feather bed on the floor and he stretched himself on it, so worn out by what he had seen and endured that he fell asleep.

He was roused by the door opening again. Madame Langlade came in, and she was surprised and frightened at finding him. It was nearly night and a fierce summer rain beat upon the roof, dripping through cracks of the heat-dried bark. Madame Langlade had come to stop a leak. She told Henry that all the English except himself were killed, but she hoped he would escape. She brought him some water to drink.

As darkness came on, he lay thinking of his desperate state. He was four hundred miles from Detroit, which he did not then know was besieged, and with all his stores captured or destroyed by the Indians, he had no provisions. He could not stay where he was, and if he ventured out, the first red man who met him would kill him.

By morning the Indians came to the house inquiring for Henry, whom they had missed. Madame Langlade was in such fear that they might kill her children if they found Henry sheltered in the house, that she told her husband where he was and begged to have him given up. This the Frenchman at first refused to do; but he finally led the Indians again to the attic.

Henry stood up, expecting to die.

The Indians were all partially drunk and had satisfied themselves with slaughter. One of them seized Henry by the collar and lifted a knife to plunge into his breast. White man and red man looked intently at each other, and the savage, perhaps moved by the fearless despair in the young Englishman's eyes, concluded to take him prisoner. Henry began to think he could not be killed.

He found that the captain and lieutenant of Michilimackinac were also alive and prisoners like himself. The missionary priest was doing all he could to restrain his maddened flock. At a council held between Chippewas and Ottawas, Henry was bought with presents by a Chippewa chief named Wawatam, who loved him, and who had been absent the day of the attack Wawatam put Henry in his canoe, carried him across the strait to Michilimackinac Island, and hid him in a cave, which is now called Skull Rock by the islanders, because Henry found ancient skulls and bones in the bottom of it. As the island was held sacred by the Indians, this was probably one of their old sepulchres. Its dome top is smothered in a tangle of evergreens and brush. There is a low, triangular entrance, and the hollow inside is shaped like an elbow. More than one island boy has since crept back to the dark bend where Henry lay hidden on the skulls, but only a drift of damp leaves can be found there now.

The whole story of Alexander Henry's adventures, before he escaped and returned safely to Canada, is a wonderful chapter in western history.

The Indians were not guilty of all the cruelties practiced in this war. Bounties were offered for savage scalps. One renegade Englishman, named David Owen, came back from adoption and marriage into a tribe, bringing the scalps of his squaw wife and her friends.

Through the entire summer Pontiac was successful in everything except the taking of Detroit. He besieged it from May until October. With autumn his hopes began to dwindle. He had asked the French to help him, and refused to believe that their king had made a treaty at Paris, giving up to the English all French claims in the New World east of the Mississippi. His cause was lost. He could band unstable warriors together for a common good, but he could not control politics in Europe, nor defend a people given up by their sovereign, against the solidly advancing English race.



But he was unwilling to own himself defeated while the French flag waved over a foot of American ground. This clever Indian, needing supplies to carry on his war, used civilized methods to get them on credit. He gave promissory notes written on birch bark, signed with his own totem, or tribe-mark—a picture of the otter. These notes were faithfully paid.

When he saw his struggle becoming hopeless eastward, he drew off to the Illinois settlements to fight back the English from taking possession of Fort Chartres, the last French post. They might come up the Mississippi from New Orleans, or they might come down the Ohio. The Iroquois had always called the Mississippi the Ohio, considering that river which rose near their own country the great river, and the northern branch merely a tributary.

Pontiac ordered the Illinois Indians to take up arms and stand by him.

"Hesitate not," he said, "or I will destroy you as fire does the prairie grass! These are the words of Pontiac."

They obeyed him. He sent more messengers down as far as New Orleans, keeping the tribes stirred against the English. He camped with his forces around Fort Chartres, cherishing it and urging the last French commandant, St. Ange de Bellerive, to take up arms with him, until that poor captain, tormented by the savage mob, and only holding the place until its English owners received it, was ready to march out with his few soldiers and abandon it.

It is told that while Pontiac was leading his forlorn hope, he made his conquerors ridiculous. Major Loftus with a detachment of troops came up the Mississippi to take possession according to treaty. Pontiac turned him back. Captain Pittman came up the river. Pontiac turned him back. Captain Morris started from Detroit, and Pontiac squatted defiantly in his way. Lieutenant Frazer descended the Ohio. Pontiac caught him and shipped him to New Orleans by canoe. Captain Croghan was also stopped near Detroit. Both French and Spanish people roared with laughter at the many failures of the coming race to seize what had so easily been obtained by treaty.

Two years and a half passed between Pontiac's attack on Detroit and the formal surrender of Fort Chartres. The great war chief's heart, with a gradual breaking, finally yielded before the steadily advancing and all-conquering people that were to dominate this continent.

The second day of winter, late in the afternoon, Pontiac went into the fort unattended by any warrior, and without a word sat down near St. Ange de Bellerive in the officers' quarters. Both veteran soldier and old chief knew that Major Farmar, with a large body of troops, was almost in sight of Fort Chartres, coming from New Orleans. Perhaps before the low winter sun was out of sight, cannon mounted on one of the bastions would have to salute the new commandant. Sentinels on the mound of Fort Chartres could see a frosty valley, reaching to the Mississippi, glinting in the distance. That alluvial stretch was, in the course of years, to be eaten away by the river even to the bastions. The fort itself, built at such expense, would soon be abandoned by its conquerors, to sink, piecemeal, a noble and massive ruin. The dome-shaped powder house and stone quarters would be put to ignoble uses, and forest trees, spreading the spice of walnut fragrance, or the dense shadow of oaks, would grow through the very room where St. Ange and Pontiac sat. Indians, passing by, would camp in the old place, forgetting how the last hope of their race had clung to it.

The Frenchman partly foresaw these changes, and it was a bitter hour to him. He wanted to have it over and to cross the Mississippi, to a town recently founded northward on the west shore, where many French settlers had collected, called St. Louis. This was then considered Spanish ground. But if the French king deserted his American colonies, why should not his American colonists desert him?

"Father," spoke out Pontiac, with the usual Indian term of respect, "I have always loved the French. We have often smoked the calumet together, and we have fought battles together against misguided Indians and the English dogs."

St. Ange de Bellerive looked at the dejected chief and thought of Le Moyne de Bienville, now an old man living in France, who was said to have wept and implored King Louis on his knees not to give up to the English that rich western domain which Marquette and Jolliet and La Salle and Tonty and many another Frenchman had suffered to gain, and to secure which he himself had given his best years.

"The chief must now bury the hatchet," he answered quietly.

"I have buried it," said Pontiac. "I shall lift it no more."

"The English are willing to make peace with him, if he recalls all his wampum belts of war."

Pontiac grinned. "The belts are more than one man can carry."

"Where does the chief intend to go when he leaves this post?"

Pontiac lifted his hand and pointed east, west, north, south. He would have no settled abode. It was a sign that he relinquished the inheritance of his fathers to an invader he hated. His race could not live under the civilization of the Anglo-Saxon. He would have struck out to the remotest wilderness, had he foreseen to what a burial place his continual clinging to the French would bring him. For Pontiac was assassinated by an Illinois Indian, whom an English trader had bribed, and his body lies somewhere to-day under the pavements of St. Louis, English-speaking men treading constantly over him. But if the dead chief's ears could hear, he would catch also the sound of the beloved French tongue lingering there.

A cannon thundered from one of the bastions. St. Ange stood up, and Pontiac stood up with him.

"The English are in sight," said St. Ange de Bellerive. "That salute is the signal for the flag of France to be lowered on Fort Chartres."

* * * * *



ANNOUNCEMENTS



INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN HISTORY

EUROPEAN BEGINNINGS

By Alice M. Atkinson

12mo, cloth, xvi + 303 Pages, illustrated, 75 cents.

This volume has been prepared to meet the need of the sixth grade of the grammar school for a short and simple introduction to the history of the United States to accord with the recommendations of the Committee of Eight of the American Historical Association. In a clear, straightforward story full of interest for young readers it tells about some of the events that make up the history of Europe from the days of Greece and Rome to the colonization of America. The wealth of pertinent illustrations adds to the interest and value of the book, and the open, attractive type page makes easy reading. Teachers will find the material well arranged for class purposes, each section being of suitable length for one lesson and fully provided with helps in the way of suggestive questions and references for further reading in class.

The purpose throughout has been to tell vividly, simply, and fully about a few great persons and events; to maintain strict historical accuracy; and to bring the past into relation with the present at as many points as possible. Primitive man, Rome and Greece, the Northmen, the Church, the Crusades, medieval life in town and country, and discoveries and inventions are among the subjects treated. The narrative ends with the death of Queen Elizabeth and the movement toward the colonization of America.

English history, wherever possible, forms the basis of the story, giving the clearness and simplicity of treatment necessary in a history for the grammar grades. Altogether, this book in a new field is admirably adapted to successful use in American schools.

GINN AND COMPANY Publishers

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BLAISDELL'S

BOOKS ON HISTORY

By ALBERT F. BLAISDELL

STORIES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY

12mo, cloth, 191 pages, illustrated, 40 cents.

Forty of the most interesting events in English history, from the earliest times to the present day, form the subjects of these chapters, which have been carefully edited and rewritten from standard writers for the use of pupils in grades five to eight.

THE STORY OF AMERICAN HISTORY

12mo, cloth, 440 pages, illustrated, 60 cents.

The story of our country is here told in twenty-six short chapters. Each one connects some leading event with an important historical character. Picturesque accounts are given of dramatic events, manners of olden times, and exceptional deeds of valor. The book provides suitable reading for pupils in the middle grades of the grammar school.

HERO STORIES FROM AMERICAN HISTORY

By Albert F. Blaisdell and Francis K. Ball, formerly Instructor in The Browne, and Nichols School, Cambridge, Mass. 12mo, cloth, 259 pages, illustrated, 50 cents.

This book may be used either as a supplementary reader in American history for the fifth and sixth grades in elementary schools or for collateral reading in connection with a formal textbook of a somewhat higher grade.

SHORT STORIES FROM AMERICAN HISTORY

By Albert F. Blaisdell and Francis K. Ball, formerly Instructor in The Browne and Nichols School, Cambridge, Mass. 12mo, cloth, 146 pages, illustrated, 40 cents.

This collection of interesting stories is designed for supplementary reading in the fourth and fifth grades of elementary schools. It contains eighteen vivid narratives of dramatic events which took place during the first two hundred years in the history of our country. Each story will appeal to the young reader because of its human interest and because of its presentation of the picturesque life of our forefathers.

GINN AND COMPANY Publishers

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FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY THROUGH THE APPALACHIANS

By ALBERT PERRY BRIGHAM

Professor of Geology in Colgate University, Hamilton, N.Y.

12mo, cloth, 188 pages, with maps and illustrations, 50 cents.

This volume is designed to aid the study of American history and geography in the upper grades of grammar and first year of high schools. It gives the story of the great roads across the Appalachians, telling where they are, why they run as they do, and what their history has been. The evolution from Indian trails to modern rapid transit is studied in the Berkshires, along the Hudson and Mohawk, across the uplands from Philadelphia and Baltimore, and through the Great Valley to Tennessee and Kentucky.

The book shows how the waves of migration swept through the passes from the seaboard to the country west of the mountains, and the essential physiographic features of the eastern United States are worked in as a part of the narrative.

William M. Davis, Professor of Geology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.: Brigham's From Trail to Railway is a serviceable example of a class of books that I hope to see increase in number.

Amos W. Farnham, State Normal School, Oswego, N.Y.: From Trail to Railway is written in Professor Brigham's clear and strong way of saying things, and any one who knows the man can feel him as he reads if he cannot see him. The style is well suited to the grades for which the book is written, and the story of pioneer life is one to engage the interest of history and geography pupils alike.

GINN AND COMPANY Publishers

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READING BOOKS ON AMERICAN HISTORY

Blaisdell: Story of American History $0.60

Blaisdell and Ball: Hero Stories from American History .50

Blaisdell and Ball: Short Stories from American History .40

Brigham: Geographic Influences in American History 1.25

Catherwood: Heroes of the Middle West .50

Collins: History of Vermont .80

Davis: Under Six Flags. The Story of Texas .50

Faris: Real Stories from Our History .60

Fassett: Colonial Life in New Hampshire .60

Fiske: How the United States became a Nation .50

Fiske-Irving: Washington and his Country .60

Franklin: Autobiography .40

Gayley and Flaherty: Poetry of the People .50

Hitchcock: The Louisiana Purchase .60

Lane and Hill: American History in Literature .50

Lawler: Columbus and Magellan .40

Montgomery: Heroic Ballads .50

Moore-Tiffany: From Colony to Commonwealth .60

Pilgrims and Puritans .60

Williams: Some Successful Americans .50

GINN AND COMPANY Publishers

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