France and England in North America Part 10

In declaring to the world the achievement which he had so long concealed and so explicitly denied, the worthy missionary found himself in serious embarra.s.sment. In his first book, he had stated that, on the twelfth of March, he left the mouth of the Illinois on his way northward, and that, on the eleventh of April, he was captured by the Sioux, near the mouth of the Wisconsin, five hundred miles above. This would give him only a month to make his alleged canoe-voyage from the Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico, and again upward to the place of his capture,--a distance of three thousand two hundred and sixty miles. With his means of transportation, three months would have been insufficient. [Footnote: La Salle, in the following year, with a far better equipment, was more than three months and a half in making the journey. A Mississippi trading-boat of the last generation, with sails and oars, ascending against the current, was thought to do remarkably well if it could make twenty miles a day.

Hennepin, if we believe his own statements, must have ascended at an average rate of sixty miles, though his canoe was large and heavily laden.] He saw the difficulty; but on the other hand, he saw that he could not greatly change either date without confusing the parts of his narrative which preceded and which followed. In this perplexity, he chose a middle course, which only involved him in additional contradictions.

Having, as he affirms, gone down to the Gulf and returned to the mouth of the Illinois, he set out thence to explore the river above; and he a.s.signs the twenty-fourth of April as the date of this departure. This gives him forty-three days for his voyage to the mouth of the river and back.

Looking farther, we find that, having left the Illinois on the twenty- fourth, he paddled his canoe two hundred leagues northward, and was then captured by the Sioux on the twelfth of the same month. In short, he ensnares himself in a hopeless confusion of dates. [Footnote: Hennepin here falls into gratuitous inconsistencies. In the edition of 1697, in order to gain a little time, he says that he left the Illinois on his voyage southward on the eighth of March, 1680; and yet, in the preceding chapter, he repeats the statement of the first edition, that he was detained at the Illinois by floating ice till the twelfth. Again, he says in the first edition, that he was captured by the Sioux on the eleventh of April; and in the edition of 1697, he changes this date to the twelfth, without gaining any advantage by doing so.]

Here, one would think, is sufficient reason, for rejecting his story; and yet the general truth of the descriptions, and a certain verisimilitude which marks it, might easily deceive a careless reader and perplex a critical one. These, however, are easily explained. Six years before Hennepin published his pretended discovery, his brother friar, Father Chretien Le Clercq, published an account of the Recollet missions among the Indians, under the t.i.tle of "etabliss.e.m.e.nt de la Foi." This book was suppressed by the French government; but a few copies fortunately survived. One of these is now before me. It contains the journal of Father Zen.o.be Membre, on his descent of the Mississippi in 1681, in company with La Salle. The slightest comparison of his narrative with that of Hennepin is sufficient to show that the latter framed his own story out of incidents and descriptions furnished by his brother missionary, often using his very words, and sometimes copying entire pages, with no other alterations than such as were necessary to make himself, instead of La Salle and his companions, the hero of the exploit. The records of literary piracy may be searched in vain for an act of depredation more recklessly impudent. [Footnote: Hennepin may have copied from the unpublished journal of Membre, which the latter had placed in the hands of his superior, or he may have compiled from Le Clercq's book, relying on the suppression of the edition to prevent detection. He certainly saw and used it, for he elsewhere borrows the exact words of the editor. He is so careless that he steals from Membre pa.s.sages which he might easily have written for himself, as, for example, a description of the opossum and another of the cougar, animals with which he was acquainted. Compare the following pages of the _Nouvelle Decouverte_ with the corresponding pages of Le Clercq: Hennepin, 252, Le Clercq, ii. 217; H. 253, Le C. ii. 218; H. 257, Le C.

ii. 221; H. 259, Le C. ii. 224; H. 262, Le C. ii. 226; H. 265, Le C. ii.

229; H. 267, Le C. ii. 283; H. 270, Le C. ii. 235; H. 280, Le C. ii. 240; H. 295, Le C. ii. 249; H. 296, Le C. ii. 250; H. 297, Le C. ii. 253; H.

299, Le C. ii. 254; H. 301, Le C. ii. 257. Some of these parallel pa.s.sages will be found in Sparks's _Life of La Salle_, where this remarkable fraud was first fully exposed. In Shea's _Discovery of the Mississippi_, there is an excellent critical examination of Hennepin's works. His plagiarisms from Le Clercq are not confined to the pa.s.sages cited above; for, in his later editions, he stole largely from other parts of the suppressed _etabliss.e.m.e.nt de la Foi_.]

Such being the case, what faith can we put in the rest of Hennepin's story? Fortunately, there are tests by which the earlier parts of his book can be tried; and, on the whole, they square exceedingly well with contemporary records of undoubted authenticity. Bating his exaggerations respecting the Falls of Niagara, his local descriptions, and even his estimates of distance, are generally accurate. He constantly, it is true, magnifies his own acts, and thrusts himself forward as one of the chiefs of an enterprise, to the costs of which he had contributed nothing, and to which he was merely an appendage; and yet, till he reaches the Mississippi, there can be no doubt that, in the main, he tells the truth.

As for his ascent of that river to the country of the Sioux, the general statement is fully confirmed by allusions of Tonty, and other contemporary writers. [Footnote: It is certain that persons having the best means of information believed at the time in Hennepin's story of his journeys on the Upper Mississippi. The compiler of the _Relation des Decouvertes_, who was in close relations with La Salle and those who acted with him, does not intimate a doubt of the truth of the report which Hennepin, on his return, gave to the Provincial Commissary of his Order, and which is in substance the same which he published two years later. The _Relation_, it is to be observed, was written only a few months after the return of Hennepin, and embodies the pith of his narrative of the Upper Mississippi, no part of which had then been published.] For the details of the journey, we must look on Hennepin alone; whose account of the company and of the peculiar traits of its Indian occupation afford, as far as they go, good evidence of truth. Indeed, this part of his narrative could only have been written by one well versed in the savage life of this north-western region. [Footnote: In this connection, it is well to examine the various Sioux words which Hennepin uses incidentally, and which he must have acquired by personal intercourse with the tribe, as no Frenchman then understood the language. These words, as far as my information reaches, are in every instance correct. Thus, he says that the Sioux called his breviary a "bad spirit"--_Ouackanche_. _Wakanshe_, or _Wakansheclia_, would express the same meaning in modern English spelling. He says elsewhere that they called the guns of his companions _Manzaouackanche_, which he translates, "iron possessed with a bad spirit." The western Sioux to this day call a gun _Manzawakan_, "metal possessed with a spirit."

_Chonga (shonka)_, "a, dog," _Ouasi (wahsee)_, "a pine-tree," _Chinnen (s.h.i.+nnan)_, "a robe," or "garment," and other words, are given correctly, with their interpretations. The word _Louis_, affirmed by Hennepin to mean "the sun," seems at first sight a wilful inaccuracy, as this is not the word used in general by the Sioux. The Yankton band of this people, however, call the sun _oouee_, which, it is evident, represents the French p.r.o.nunciation of Louis, omitting the initial letter. This, Hennepin would be apt enough to supply, thereby conferring a compliment alike on himself, Louis Hennepin, and on the King, Louis XIV., who, to the indignation of his brother monarchs, had chosen the sun as his emblem.

A variety of trivial incidents touched upon by Hennepin, while recounting his life among the Sioux, seem to me to afford a strong presumption of an actual experience. I speak on this point with the more confidence, as the Indians in whose lodges I was once domesticated for several weeks, belonged to a western band of the same people.] Trusting, then, to his guidance in the absence of better, let us follow in the wake of his adventurous canoe.

It was laden deeply; with goods belonging to La Salle, and meant by handing presents to Indians on the way, though the travelers, it appears, proposed to use them in trading of their own account. The friar was still wrapped in his gray capote and hood, shod with sandals, and decorated with the cord of St. Francis. As for his two companions, Accau [Footnote: Called Ako by Hennepin. In contemporary doc.u.ments it is written Accau, Acau, D'Accau Dacau, Dacan, and d'Accault.] and Du Gay, it is tolerably clear that the former was the real leader of the party, though Hennepin, after his custom, thrusts himself into the foremost place. Both were somewhat above the station of ordinary hired hands; and Du Gay had an uncle who was an ecclesiastic of good credit at Amiens, his native place.

In the forests that overhung the river, the buds were feebly swelling with advancing spring. There was game enough. They killed buffalo, deer, beavers, wild turkeys, and now and then a bear swimming in the river. With these, and the fish which they caught in abundance, they fared sumptuously, though it was the season of Lent. They were exemplary, however, at their devotions. Hennepin said prayers at morning and night, and the _angelus_ at noon, adding a pet.i.tion to St. Anthony of Padua, that he would save them from the peril that beset their way. In truth, there was a lion in the path. The ferocious character of the Sioux, or Dacotah, who occupied the region of the Upper Mississippi, was already known to the French; and Hennepin, not without reason, prayed that it might be his fortune to meet them, not by night, but by day.

On the eleventh or twelfth of April, they stopped in the afternoon to repair their canoe; and Hennepin busied himself in daubing it with pitch, while the others cooked a turkey. Suddenly a fleet of Sioux canoes swept into sight, bearing a war-party of a hundred and twenty naked savages, who, on seeing the travellers, raised a hideous clamor; and some leaping ash.o.r.e and others into the water, they surrounded the astonished Frenchmen in an instant. [Footnote: The edition of 1683 says that there were thirty- three canoes: that of 1697 raises the number to fifty. The number of Indians is the same in both. The later narrative is more in detail than the former.] Hennepin held out the peace-pipe, but one of them s.n.a.t.c.hed it from him. Next, he hastened to proffer a gift of Martinique tobacco, which was better received. Some of the old warriors repeated the name _Miamiha_, giving him to understand that they were a war-party on the way to attack the Miamis; on which Hennepin, with the help of signs and of marks which he drew on the sand with a stick, explained that the Miamis had gone across the Mississippi beyond their reach. Hereupon, he says that three or four old men placed their hands on his head, and began a dismal wailing; while he with his handkerchief wiped away their tears in order to evince sympathy with their affliction, from whatever cause arising.

Notwithstanding this demonstration of tenderness, they refused to smoke with him in his peace-pipe, and forced him and his companions to embark and paddle across the river; while they all followed behind, uttering yells and howlings which froze the missionary's blood.

On reaching the farther side, they made their camp-fires, and allowed their prisoners to do the same. Accau and Du Gay slung their kettle; while Hennepin, to propitiate the Sioux, carried to them two turkeys, of which there were several in the canoe. The warriors had seated themselves in a ring, to debate on the fate of the Frenchmen; and two chiefs presently explained to the friar, by significant signs, that it had been resolved that his head should be split with a war-club. This produced the effect which was no doubt intended. Hennepin ran to the canoe, and quickly returned with one of the men, both loaded with presents, which he threw into the midst of the a.s.sembly; and then, bowing his head, offered them at the same time a hatchet with which to kill him if they wished to do so.

His gifts and his submission seemed to appease them. They gave him and his companions a dish of beaver's flesh; but, to his great concern, they returned his peace-pipe, an act which he interpreted as a sign of danger.

That night, the Frenchmen slept little, expecting to be murdered before morning. There was, in fact, a great division of opinion among the Sioux.

Some were for killing them, and taking their goods; while others, eager above all things that French traders should come among them with the knives, hatchets, and guns of which they had heard the value, contended that it would be impolitic to discourage the trade by putting to death its pioneers.

Scarcely had morning dawned on the anxious captives, when a young chief, naked, and painted from head to foot, appeared before them, and asked for the pipe, which the friar gladly gave him. He filled it, smoked it, made the warriors do the same, and, having given this hopeful pledge of amity, told the Frenchmen that, since the Miamis were out of reach, the war-party would return home, and that they must accompany them. To this Hennepin gladly agreed, having, as he declares, his great work of exploration so much at heart that he rejoiced in the prospect of achieving it even in their company.

He soon, however, had a foretaste of the affliction in store for him; for, when he opened his breviary and began to mutter his morning devotion, his new companions gathered about him with faces that betrayed their superst.i.tious terror, and gave him to understand that his book was a bad spirit with which he must hold no more converse. They thought, indeed, that he was muttering a charm for their destruction. Accau and Du Gay, conscious of the danger, begged the friar to dispense with his devotions, lest he and they alike should be tomahawked; but Hennepin says that his sense of duty rose superior to his fears, and that he was resolved to repeat his office at all hazards, though not until he had asked pardon of his two friends for thus imperilling their lives. Fortunately, he presently discovered a device by which his devotion and his prudence were completely reconciled. He ceased the muttering which had alarmed the Indians, and, with the breviary open on his knees, sang the service in loud and cheerful tones. As this had no savor of sorcery, and as they now imagined that the book was teaching its owner to sing for their amus.e.m.e.nt, they conceived a favorable opinion of both alike.

These Sioux, it may be observed, were the ancestors of those who committed the horrible but not unprovoked ma.s.sacres of 1863, in the valley of the St. Peter. Hennepin complains bitterly of their treatment of him, which, however, seems to have been tolerably good. Afraid that he would lag behind, as his canoe was heavy and slow, [Footnote: And yet it had, by his account, made a distance of thirteen hundred and eighty miles from the mouth of the Mississippi upward in twenty-four days.] they placed several warriors in it, to aid him and his men in paddling. They kept on their way from morning till night, building huts for their bivouac when it rained, and sleeping on the open ground when the weather was fair, which, says Hennepin, "gave us a good opportunity to contemplate the moon and stars."

The three Frenchmen took the precaution of sleeping at the side of the young chief who had been the first to smoke the peacepipe, and who seemed inclined to befriend them; but there was another chief, one Aquipaguetin, a crafty old savage, who, having lost a son in war with the Miamis, was angry that the party had abandoned their expedition, and thus deprived him of his revenge. He therefore kept up a dismal lament through half the night; while other old men, crouching over Hennepin as he lay trying to sleep, stroked him with their hands, and uttered wailings so lugubrious that he was forced to the belief that he had been doomed to death, and that they were charitably bemoaning his fate. [Footnote: This weeping and wailing over Hennepin once seemed to me an anomaly in his account of Sioux manners, as I am not aware that such practices are to be found among them at present. They are mentioned, however, by other early writers. Le Sueur, who was among them in 1699-1700, was wept over no less than Hennepin. See the abstract of his journal in La Harpe.]

One night, they were, for some reason, unable to bivouac near their protector, and were forced to make their fire at the end of the camp. Here they were soon beset by a crowd of Indians, who told them that Aquipaguetin had at length resolved to tomahawk them. The malcontents were gathered in a knot at a little distance, and Hennepin hastened to appease them by another gift of knives and tobacco. This was but one of the devices of the old chief to deprive them of their goods without robbing them outright. He had with him the bones of a deceased relative, which he was carrying home wrapped in skins prepared with smoke after the Indian fas.h.i.+on, and gayly decorated with bands of dyed porcupine quills.

He would summon his warriors, and, placing these relics in the midst of the a.s.sembly, call on all present to smoke in their honor; after which Hennepin was required to offer a more substantial tribute in the shape of cloth, beads, hatchets, tobacco, and the like, to be laid upon the bundle of bones. The gifts thus acquired were then, in the name of the deceased, distributed among the persons present.

On one occasion, Aquipaguetin killed a bear, and invited the chiefs and warriors to feast upon it. They accordingly a.s.sembled on a prairie, west of the river; and, the banquet over, they danced a "medicine-dance." They were all painted from head to foot, with their hair oiled, garnished with red and white feathers, and powdered with the down of birds. In this guise, they set their arms akimbo, and fell to stamping with such fury that the hard prairie was dented with the prints of their moccasons; while the chief's son, crying at the top of his throat, gave to each in turn the pipe of war. Meanwhile, the chief himself, singing in a loud and rueful voice, placed his hands on the heads of the three Frenchmen, and from time to time interrupted his music to utter a vehement harangue. Hennepin could not understand the words, but his heart sank as the conviction grew strong within him that these ceremonies tended to his destruction. It seems, however, that, after all the chief's efforts, his party was in the minority, the greater part being averse to either killing or robbing the three strangers. Every morning, at daybreak, an old warrior shouted the signal of departure; and the rec.u.mbent savages leaped up, manned their birchen fleet, and plied their paddles against the current, often without waiting to break their fast. Sometimes they stopped for a buffalo-hunt on the neighboring prairies; and there was no lack of provisions. They pa.s.sed Lake Pepin, which Hennepin called the Lake of Tears, by reason of the howlings and lamentations here uttered over him by Aquipaguetin; and, nineteen days after his capture, landed near the site of St. Paul. The father's sorrows now began in earnest. The Indians broke his canoe to pieces, having first hidden their own among the alder-bushes. As they belonged to different bands and different villages, their mutual jealousy now overcame all their prudence, and each proceeded to claim his share of the captives and the booty. Happily, they made an amicable distribution, or it would have fared ill with the three Frenchmen; and each taking his share, not forgetting the priestly vestments of Hennepin, the splendor of which they could not sufficiently admire, they set out across the country for their villages, which lay towards the north, in the neighborhood of Lake Buade, now called Mille Lac.

Being, says Hennepin, exceedingly tall and active, they walked at a prodigious speed, insomuch that no European could long keep pace with them. Though the month of May had begun, there were frosts at night; and the marshes and ponds were glazed with ice, which cut the missionary's legs as he waded through. They swam the larger streams, and Hennepin nearly perished with cold as be emerged from the icy current. His two companions, who were smaller than he, and who could not swim, were carried over on the backs of the Indians. They showed, however, no little endurance; and he declares that he should have dropped by the way, but for their support. Seeing him disposed to lag, the Indians, to spur him on, set fire to the dry gra.s.s behind him, and then, taking him by the hands, ran forward with him to escape the flames. To add to his misery, he was nearly famished, as they gave him only a small piece of smoked meat, once a day, though it does not appear that they themselves fared better. On the fifth day, being by this time in extremity, he saw a crowd of squaws and children approaching over the prairie, and presently descried the bark lodges of an Indian town. The goal was reached. He was among the homes of the Sioux.

CHAPTER XIX.

1680, 1681.

HENNEPIN AMONG THE SIOUX.

SIGNS OP DANGER.--ADOPTION.--HENNEPIN AND HIS INDIAN RELATIVES.--THE HUNTING PARTY.--THE SIOUX CAMP.--FALLS OF ST. ANTHONY.--A VAGABOND FRIAR.--HIS ADVENTURES ON THE MISSISSIPPI.--GREYSOLON DU LHUT.--RETURN TO CIVILIZATION.

As Hennepin entered the village, he beheld a sight which caused him to invoke St. Anthony of Padua. In front of the lodges were certain stakes, to which were attached bundles of straw, intended, as he supposed, for burning him and his friends alive. His concern was redoubled when he saw the condition of the Picard Du Gay, whose hair and face had been painted with divers colors, and whose head was decorated with a tuft of white feathers. In this guise, he was entering the village, followed by a crowd of Sioux, who compelled him to sing and keep time to his own music by rattling a dried gourd containing a number of pebbles. The omens, indeed, were exceedingly threatening; for treatment like this was usually followed by the speedy immolation of the captive. Hennepin ascribes it to the effect of his invocations, that, being led into one of the lodges, among a throng of staring squaws and children, he and his companions were seated on the ground, and presented with large dishes of birch bark, containing a mess of wild rice boiled with dried whortleberries; a repast which he declares to have been the best that had fallen to his lot since the day of his captivity. [Footnote: The Sioux, or Dacotah, as they call themselves, were a numerous people, separated into three great divisions, which were again subdivided into bands. Those among whom Hennepin was a prisoner belonged to the division known as the Issanti, Issanyati, or, as he writes it, Issati, of which the princ.i.p.al band was the Meddewakantonwan. The other great divisions, the Yanktons and the Tintonwans, or Tetons, lived west of the Mississippi, extending beyond the Missouri, and ranging as far as the Rocky Mountains. The Issanti cultivated the soil, but the extreme western bands subsisted on the buffalo alone. The former had two kinds of dwelling,--the _teepee_ or skin lodge, and the bark lodge. The teepee, which was used by all the Sioux, consists of a covering of dressed buffalo hide stretched on a conical stack of poles. The bark lodge was peculiar to the eastern Sioux, and examples of it might be seen until within a few years among the bands, on the St. Peter's. In its general character it was like the Huron and Iroquois houses, but was inferior in construction. It had a ridge roof framed of poles extending from the posts which formed the sides, and the whole was covered with elm-bark. The lodges in the villages to which Hennepin was conducted were probably of this kind.

The name Sioux is an abbreviation of _Nadouessioux_, an Ojibwa word meaning _enemies_. The Ojibwas used it to designate this people, and occasionally also the Iroquois, being at deadly war with both.

Rev. Stephen R. Riggs, for many years a missionary among the Issanti Sioux, says that this division consists of four distinct bands. They ceded all their lands east of the Mississippi to the United States in 1837, and lived on the St. Peter's till driven thence in consequence of the ma.s.sacres of 1862, 1863. The Yankton Sioux consist of two bands, which are again subdivided. The a.s.siniboins, or Hohays, are an offshoot from the Yanktons, with whom they are now at war. The t.i.tonwan or Teton Sioux, forming the most western division, and the largest, comprise seven bands, and are among the bravest and fiercest tenants of the prairie.

The earliest French writers estimate the total number of the Sioux at forty thousand. Mr. Riggs, in 1852, placed it at about twenty-five thousand. Lake many other Indian tribes, they seem practically incapable of civilization.]

This soothed his fears: but, as he allayed his famished appet.i.te, he listened with anxious interest to the vehement jargon of the chiefs and warriors, who were disputing among themselves to whom the three captives should respectively belong; for it seems that, as far as related to them, the question of distribution had not yet been definitely settled. The debate ended in the a.s.signing of Hennepin to his old enemy Aquipaguetin; who, however, far from persisting in his evil designs, adopted him on the spot as his son. The three companions must now part company. Du Gay, not yet quite rea.s.sured of his safety, hastened to confess himself to Hennepin, but Accau proved refractory and refused the offices of religion, which did not prevent the friar from embracing them both, as he says, with an extreme tenderness. Tired as he was, he was forced to set out with his self-styled father to his village, which was fortunately not far off. An unpleasant walk of a few miles through woods and marshes brought them to the borders of a sheet of water, apparently Lake Buade, where five of Aquipaguetin's wives received the party in three canoes, and ferried them to an island on which the village stood.

At the entrance of the chief's lodge, Hennepin was met by a decrepit old Indian, withered with age, who offered him the peace-pipe, and placed him on a bear-skin which was spread by the fire. Here, to relieve his fatigue, for he was well-nigh spent, a small boy anointed his limbs with the fat of a wild cat, supposed to be sovereign in these cases by reason of the great agility of that animal. His new father gave him a bark platter of fish, covered him with a buffalo robe, and showed him six or seven of his wives, who were thenceforth, he was told, to regard him as a son. The chief's household was numerous; and his allies and relations formed a considerable clan, of which the missionary found himself an involuntary member. He was scandalized when he saw one of his adopted brothers carrying on his back the bones of a deceased friend, wrapped in the chasuble of brocade which they had taken with other vestments from his box.

Seeing their new relative so enfeebled that he could scarcely stand, the Indians made for him one of their sweating baths, [Footnote: These baths consist of a small hut, covered closely with buffalo-skins, into which the patient and his friends enter, carefully closing every aperture. A pile of heated stones is placed in the middle, and water is poured upon them, raising a dense vapor. They are still, 1868, in use among the Sioux and some other tribes.] where they immersed him in steam three times a week; a process from, which he thinks he derived great benefit. His strength gradually returned, in spite of his meagre fare; for there was a dearth of food, and the squaws were less attentive to his wants than to those of their children. They respected him, however, as a person endowed with occult powers, and stood in no little awe of a pocket compa.s.s which he had with him, as well as of a small metal pot with feet moulded after the face of a lion. This last seemed in their eyes a "medicine" of the most formidable nature, and they would not touch it without first wrapping it in a beaver-skin. For the rest, Hennepin made himself useful in various ways. He shaved the heads of the children, as was the custom of the tribe, bled certain asthmatic persons, and dosed others with orvietan, the famous panacea of his time, of which he had brought with him a good supply. With respect to his missionary functions, he seems to have given himself little trouble, unless his attempt to make a Sioux vocabulary is to be regarded as preparatory to a future apostles.h.i.+p. "I could gain nothing over them,"

he says, "in the way of their salvation, by reason of their natural stupidity." Nevertheless, on one occasion he baptized a sick child, naming it Antoinette in honor of St. Anthony of Padua. It seemed to revive after the rite, but soon relapsed and presently died, "which," he writes, "gave me great joy and satisfaction." In this, he was like the Jesuits, who could find nothing but consolation in the death of a newly baptized infant, since it was thus a.s.sured of a paradise which, had it lived, it would probably have forfeited by sharing in the superst.i.tions of its parents.

With respect to Hennepin and his Indian father, there seems to have been little love on either side; but Ouasicoude, the princ.i.p.al chief of the Sioux of this region, was the fast friend of the three white men. He was angry that they had been robbed, which he had been unable to prevent, as the Sioux had no laws, and their chiefs little power; but he spoke his mind freely, and told Aquipaguetin and the rest, in full council, that they were like a dog who steals a piece of meat from a dish, and runs away with it. When Hennepin complained of hunger, the Indians had always promised him that early in the summer he should go with them on a buffalo hunt, and have food in abundance. The time at length came, and the inhabitants of all the neighboring villages prepared for departure, To each several band was a.s.signed its special hunting-ground, and he was expected to accompany his Indian father. To this he demurred; for he feared lest Aquipaguetin, angry at the words of the great chief, might take this opportunity to revenge the insult put upon him. He therefore gave out that he expected a party of "spirits," that is to say, Frenchmen, to meet him at the mouth of the Wisconsin, bringing a supply of goods for the Indians; and he declares that La Salle had in fact promised to send traders to that place. Be this as it may, the Indians believed him; and, true or false, the a.s.sertion, as will be seen, answered the purpose for which it was made. The Indians set out in a body to the number of two hundred and fifty warriors, with their women and children. The three Frenchmen, who, though in different villages, had occasionally met during the two months of their captivity, were all of the party. They descended Rum River, which forms the outlet of Mille Lac, and which is called the St. Francis, by Hennepin. None of the Indians had offered to give him pa.s.sage; and, fearing lest he should be abandoned, he stood on the bank, hailing the pa.s.sing canoes and begging to be taken in. Accau and Du Gay presently appeared, paddling a small canoe which the Indians had given them; but they would not listen to the missionary's call, and Accau, who had no love for him, cried out that he, had paddled him long enough already. Two Indians, however, took pity on him, and brought him to the place of encampment, where Du Gay tried, to excuse himself for his conduct, but Accau was sullen and kept aloof.

After reaching the Mississippi, the whole party encamped together opposite to the mouth of Rum River, pitching their tents of skin, or building their bark huts, on the slope of a hill by the side of the water. It was a wild scene, this camp of savages among whom as yet no traders had come and no handiwork of civilization had found its way; the tall warriors, some nearly naked, some wrapped in buffalo robes, and some in s.h.i.+rts of dressed deerskin fringed with hair and embroidered with dyed porcupine quills, war-clubs of stone in their hands, and quivers at their backs filled with stone-headed arrows; the squaws, cutting smoke-dried meat with knives of flint, and boiling it in rude earthen pots of their own making, driving away, meanwhile, with shrill cries, the troops of lean dogs, who disputed the meal with a crew of hungry children. The whole camp, indeed, was threatened with, starvation. The three white men could get no food but unripe berries, from the effects of which Hennepin thinks they might all have died, but for timely doses of his orvietan.

Being tired of the Indians, he became anxious to set out for the Wisconsin to find the party of Frenchmen, real or imaginary, who were to meet him at that place. That he was permitted to do so was due to the influence of the great chief Ouasicoude, who always befriended him, and who had soundly berated his two companions for refusing him a seat in their canoe. Du Gay wished to go with him; but Accau, who liked the Indian life as much as he disliked Hennepin, preferred to remain with the hunters. A small birch canoe was given to the two adventurers, together with an earthen pot; and they had also between them a gun, a knife, and a robe of beaver-skin. Thus equipped, they began their journey, and soon approached the Falls of St.

Anthony, so named by Hennepin in honor of the inevitable St. Anthony of Padua. [Footnote: Hennepin's notice of the Falls of St. Anthony, though brief, is sufficiently accurate. He says, in his first edition, that they are forty or fifty feet high, but adds ten feet more in the edition of 1697. In 1821, according to Schoolcraft, the perpendicular fall measured forty feet. Great changes, however, have taken place here and are still in progress. The rock is a very soft, friable sandstone, overlaid by a stratum of limestone; and it is crumbling with such rapidity under the action of the water that the cataract will soon be little more than a rapid. Other changes equally disastrous, in an artistic point of view, are going on even more quickly. Beside the falls stands a city, which, by an ingenious combination of the Greek and Sioux languages, has received the name of Minneapolis, or City of the Waters, and which, in 1867, contained ten thousand inhabitants, two national banks, and an opera-house, while its rival city of St. Anthony, immediately opposite, boasted a gigantic water-cure and a State university. In short, the great natural beauty of the place is utterly spoiled.] As they were carrying their canoe by the cataract, they saw five or six Indians, who had gone before, one of whom had climbed into an oak-tree beside the princ.i.p.al fall, whence in a loud and lamentable voice he was haranguing the spirit of the waters, as a sacrifice to whom he had just hung a robe of beaver-skin among the branches. [Footnote: Oanktayhee, the princ.i.p.al deity of the Sioux, was supposed to live under these falls, though he manifested himself in the form of a buffalo. It was he who created the earth, like the Algonquin Manabozho, from mud brought to him in the paws of a musk-rat. Carver, in 1766, saw an Indian throw every thing he had about him into the cataract as an offering to this deity.] Their attention was soon engrossed by another object. Looking over the edge of the cliff which overhung the river below the falls, Hennepin saw a snake, which, as he avers, was six feet long, [Footnote: In the edition of 1683. In that of 1697 he has grown to seven or eight feet. The bank-swallows still make their nests in these cliffs, boring easily into the soft incohesive sandstone.] writhing upward towards the holes of the swallows in the face of the precipice, in order to devour their young. He pointed him out to Du Gay, and they pelted him with stones, till he fell into the river, but not before his contortions and the darting of his forked tongue had so affected the Picard's imagination that he was haunted that night with a terrific incubus.

They paddled sixty leagues down the river in the heats of July, and killed no large game but a single deer, the meat of which soon spoiled. Their main resource was the turtles, whose shyness and watchfulness caused them frequent disappointments, and many involuntary fasts. They once captured one of more than common size; and, as they were endeavoring to cut off his head, he was near avenging himself by snapping off Hennepin's finger.

There was a herd of buffalo in sight on the neighboring prairie; and Du Gay went with his gun in pursuit of them, leaving the turtle in Hennepin's custody. Scarcely was he gone when the friar, raising his eyes, saw that their canoe, which they had left at the edge of the water, had floated out into the current. Hastily turning the turtle on his back, he covered him with his habit of St. Francis, on which, for greater security, he laid a number of stones, and then, being a good swimmer, struck out in pursuit of the canoe, which he at length overtook. Finding that it would overset if he tried to climb into it, he pushed it before him to the sh.o.r.e, and then paddled towards the place, at some distance above, where he had left the turtle. He had no sooner reached it than he heard a strange sound, and beheld a long file of buffalo,--bulls, cows, and calves,--entering the water not far off, to cross to the western bank. Having no gun, as became his apostolic vocation, he shouted to Du Gay, who presently appeared, running in all haste; and they both paddled in pursuit of the game. Du Gay aimed at a young cow, and shot her in the head. She fell in shallow water near an island, where some of the herd had landed; and, being unable to drag her out, they waded into the water and butchered her where she lay.

It was forty-eight hours since they had tasted food. Hennepin made a fire, while Du Gay cut up the meat. They feasted so bountifully that they both fell ill, and were forced to remain two days on the island, taking doses of orvietan, before they were able to resume their journey.

Apparently they were not sufficiently versed in woodcraft to smoke the meat of the cow; and the hot sun soon robbed them of it. They had a few fish-hooks, but were not always successful in the use of them. On one occasion, being nearly famished, they set their line, and lay watching it.

uttering prayers in turn. Suddenly, there was a great turmoil in the water. Du Gay ran to the line, and, with the help of Hennepin, drew in two large cat-fish. [Footnote: Hennepin speaks of their size with astonishment, and says that the two together would weigh twenty-five pounds. Cat-fish have been taken in the Mississippi weighing more than a hundred and fifty pounds.] The eagles, or fish-hawks, now and then dropped a newly caught fish, of which they gladly took possession; and once they found a purveyor in an otter which they saw by the bank, devouring some object of an appearance so wonderful that Du Gay cried out that he had a devil between his paws. They scared him from his prey, which proved to be a spade-fish, or, as Hennepin correctly describes it, a species of sturgeon, with a bony projection from his snout in the shape of a paddle.

They broke their fast upon him, undeterred by this eccentric appendage.

If Hennepin had had an eye for scenery, he would have found in these his vagabond rovings wherewith to console himself in some measure for his frequent fasts. The young Mississippi, fresh from its northern springs, unstained as yet by unhallowed union with the riotous Missouri, flowed calmly on its way amid strange and unique beauties; a wilderness, clothed with velvet gra.s.s; forest-shadowed valleys; lofty heights, whose smooth slopes seemed levelled with the scythe; domes and pinnacles, ramparts and ruined towers, the work of no human hand. The canoe of the voyagers, borne on the tranquil current, glided in the shade of gray crags festooned with blossoming honeysuckles; by trees mantled with wild grape-vines, dells bright with, the flowers of the white euphorbia, the blue gentian, and the purple balm; and matted forests, where the red squirrels leaped and chattered. They pa.s.sed the great cliff whence the Indian maiden threw herself in her despair; [Footnote: The "Lover's Leap," or "Maiden's Rock,"

from which a Sioux girl, Winona, or the "Eldest Born," is said to have thrown herself in the despair of disappointed affection. The story, which seems founded in truth, will be found, not without embellishments, in Mrs.

Eastman's _Legends of the Sioux_.] and Lake Pepin lay before them, slumbering in the July sun; the far-reaching sheets of sparkling water, the woody slopes, the tower-like crags, the gra.s.sy heights basking in sunlight or shadowed by the pa.s.sing cloud; all the fair outline of its graceful scenery, the finished and polished master work of Nature. And when at evening they made their bivouac fire, and drew up their canoe, while dim, sultry clouds veiled the west, and the flashes of the silent heat-lightning gleamed on the leaden water, they could listen, as they smoked their pipes, to the strange, mournful cry of the whippoorwills, and the quavering scream of the owls.

Other thoughts than the study of the picturesque occupied the mind of Hennepin, when one day he saw his Indian father, Aquipaguetin, whom he had supposed five hundred miles distant, descending the river with ten warriors in canoes. He was eager to be the first to meet the traders, who, as Hennepin had given out, were to come with their goods to the mouth of the Wisconsin. The two travellers trembled for the consequences of this encounter; but the chief, after a short colloquy, pa.s.sed on his way. In three days he returned in ill-humor, having found no traders at the appointed spot. The Picard was absent at the time, looking for game, and Hennepin was sitting under the shade of his blanket, which he had stretched on forked sticks to protect him from the sun, when he saw his adopted father approaching with a threatening look and a war-club in his hand. He attempted no violence, however, but suffered his wrath to exhale in a severe scolding, after which he resumed his course up the river with his warriors.

If Hennepin, as he avers, really expected a party of traders at the Wisconsin, the course he now took is sufficiently explicable. If he did not expect them, his obvious course was to rejoin Tonty on the Illinois, for which he seems to have had no inclination; or to return to Canada by way of the Wisconsin, an attempt which involved the risk of starvation, as the two travellers had but ten charges of powder left. a.s.suming, then, his hope of the traders to have been real, he and Du Gay resolved, in the mean time, to join a large body of Sioux hunters, who, as Aquipaguetin had told them, were on a stream which he calls Bull River, now the Chippeway, entering the Mississippi near Lake Pepin. By so doing, they would gain a supply of food, and save themselves from the danger of encountering parties of roving warriors.

They found this band, among whom was their companion Accau, and followed them on a grand hunt along the borders of the Mississippi. Du Gay was separated for a time from Hennepin, who was placed in a canoe with a withered squaw more than eighty years old. In spite of her age, she handled her paddle with admirable address, and used it vigorously, as occasion required, to repress the gambols of three children, who, to Hennepin's great annoyance, occupied the middle of the canoe. The hunt was successful. The Sioux warriors, active as deer, chased the buffalo on foot with their stone-headed arrows, on the plains behind the heights that bordered the river; while the old men stood sentinels at the top, watching for the approach of enemies. One day an alarm was given. The warriors rushed towards the supposed point of danger, but found nothing more formidable than two squaws of their own nation, who brought strange news.

A war-party of Sioux, they said, had gone towards Lake Superior, and met by the way five "Spirits;" that is to say, five Europeans. Hennepin was full of curiosity to learn who the strangers might be; and they, on their part, were said to have shown great anxiety to know the nationality of the three white men who, as they were told, were on the river. The hunt was over; and the hunters, with Hennepin and his companion, were on their way northward to their towns, when they met the five "Spirits" at some distance below the Falls of St. Anthony. They proved to be Daniel Greysolon du Lhut, with four well-armed Frenchmen.

This bold and enterprising man, stigmatized by the Intendant d.u.c.h.esneau as a leader of _coureurs de bois_, was a cousin of Tonty, born at Lyons. He belonged to that caste of the lesser n.o.bles, whose name was legion, and whose admirable military qualities shone forth so conspicuously in the wars of Louis XIV. Though his enterprises were independent of those of La Salle, they were, at this time, carried on in connection with Count Frontenac and certain merchants in his interest, of whom Du Lhut's uncle, Patron, was one; while Louvigny, his brother-in-law, was in alliance with the Governor, and was an officer of his guard. Here, then, was a kind of family league, countenanced by Frontenac, and acting conjointly with him, in order, if the angry letters of the Intendant are to be believed, to reap a clandestine profit under the shadow of the Governor's authority, and in violation of the royal ordinances. The rudest part of the work fell to the share of Du Lhut, who, with a persistent hardihood, not surpa.s.sed, perhaps, even by La Salle, was continually in the forest, in the Indian towns, or in remote wilderness outposts planted by himself, exploring, trading, fighting, ruling lawless savages, and whites scarcely less ungovernable, and, on one or more occasions, varying his life by crossing the ocean, to gain interviews with the colonial minister, Seignelay, amid the splendid vanities of Versailles. Strange to say, this man of hardy enterprise was a martyr to the gout, which, for more than a quarter of a century, grievously tormented him; though for a time he thought himself cured by the intercession of the Iroquois saint, Catharine Tegahkouita, to whom he had made a vow to that end. He was, without doubt, an habitual breaker of the royal ordinances regulating the fur-trade; yet his services were great to the colony and to the crown, and his name deserves a place of honor among the pioneers of American civilization. [Footnote: The facts concerning Du Lhut have been gleaned from a variety of contemporary doc.u.ments, chiefly the letters of his enemy, d.u.c.h.esneau, who always puts him in the worst light, especially in his despatch to Seignelay of 10 Nov.

1679, where he charges both him and the Governor with carrying on an illicit trade with the English of New York, an example, which, if followed, would ruin the colony by diverting the sources of its support to its rival. Du Lhut built a trading fort on Lake Superior, called Cananistigoyan (La Houtan), or Kamalastigouia (Perrot). It was on the north side, at the mouth of a river entering Thunder Bay, where Fort William now stands. In 1684, he caused two Indians, who had murdered several Frenchmen on Lake Superior, to be shot. He displayed in this affair great courage and coolness, undaunted by the crowd of excited savages who surrounded him and his little band of Frenchmen. The long letter, in which he recounts the capture and execution of the murderers, is before me. d.u.c.h.esneau makes his conduct on this occasion the ground of a charge of rashness. In 1686, Denonville, then Governor of the colony, ordered him to fortify the Detroit; that is, the strait between Lakes Erie and Huron, He went thither with fifty men and built a palisade fort, which he occupied for some time. In 1687, he, together with Tonty and Durantaye, joined Denonville against the Senecas, with a body of Indians from the Upper Lakes. In 1689, during the panic that followed the Iroquois invasion of Montreal, Du Lhut, with twenty-eight Canadians, attacked twenty-two Iroquois in canoes, received their fire without returning it, bore down upon them, killed eighteen of them, and captured three, only one escaping.

In 1695, he was in command at Fort Frontenac. In 1697, he succeeded to the command of a company of infantry, but was suffering wretchedly from the gout at Fort Frontenac. In 1710, Vaudreuil, in a despatch to the minister, Ponchartrain, announced his death as occurring in the previous winter, and added the brief comment, "c'etait un tres-honnete homme." Other contemporaries speak to the same effect. "Mr. Dulhut, Gentilhomme Lionnois, qui a beaucoup de merite et de capacite."--La Hontan, i. 103 (1703). "Le Sieur du Lut, homme d'esprit et d'experience."--Le Clercq, ii.

137. Charlevoix calls him "one of the bravest officers the King has ever had in this colony." His name is variously spelled Du Luc, Du Lud, Du Lude, Du Lut, Du Luth, Du Lhut. For an account of the Iroquois virgin, Tegahkouita, whose intercession is said to have cured him of the gout, see Charlevoix, i. 572.

On a contemporary ma.n.u.script map by the Jesuit Raffeix, representing the routes of Marquiette, La Salle, and Du Lhut, are the following words, referring to the last-named discoverer, and interesting in connection with Hennepin's statements: "Mr. du Lude le premier a este chez les Sioux en 1678, et a este proche la source du Mississippi, et ensuite vint retirer le P. Louis (_Hennepin_) qui avoit este fait prisonnier chez les Sioux."

Du Lhut here appears as the deliverer of Hennepin.]