Read Ebook: The Man with the Iron Hand by Parish John Carl Shambaugh Benjamin Franklin Editor

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Ebook has 576 lines and 60738 words, and 12 pages

Presently the voyagers drew near the broad mouth of the Ohio, in whose valley, raided from time to time by fierce tribes of the Iroquois, were the villages of the Shawnee Indians. Along the shores were canes and reeds that grew thick and high. Mosquitoes began to gather in swarms that made life miserable for the men as they toiled in the heat of the day. But following the way of the Indians of the Southern country, they raised above their canoes tents of canvas which sheltered them in part from both the mosquitoes and the burning sun.

So sailing, they came one day unexpectedly upon a group of armed Indians. Up rose Marquette and held high the pipe of peace, while Joliet and his comrades reached for their guns to be ready should an attack be made. This time, however, they were safe; for the Indians were only inviting them to come ashore and eat. The voyagers landed and were led to the village, where the Indians fed them upon buffalo meat and white plums.

It was evident that these Indians were acquainted with white men, and that they bought goods of traders from the East; for they had knives and guns and beads and cloth and hatchets and hoes, and even glass flasks for their powder. Venturesome Englishmen from the Atlantic Coast had perhaps sold them these things in exchange for furs. With the Spanish firmly settled in the Southwest, and the English--long-time enemies of France--pushing in from the East, it was high time that the French came down the river, if the Great Valley of the Mississippi were ever to be brought under the flag of France.

The Indians now told Marquette and Joliet that the great sea to the south was only ten days' journey away; and so with renewed energy the band of eight set out once more in their canoes. Huge cottonwoods and elms now lined either shore, and bright-plumaged birds darted from limb to limb; while in the hidden prairies beyond could be heard the bellowing of wild buffalo.

As they drew near a village of Michigamea Indians, whose lodges were almost at the water's edge, the voyagers heard the savage yells of warriors inciting one another to an attack. Soon they swarmed along the shore with bows and arrows, and with hatchets and great war clubs. In vain did Marquette hold up the calumet of peace. Downstream the Indians climbed into their long dugouts and pushed up to attack the strangers from below; while upstream other young warriors launched their wooden canoes and swept down the river with hoarse cries of battle. Hemmed in by the two war parties in boats, and with armed enemies howling along the river bank, death seemed very near to the Frenchmen. The warning words of the Peoria chief had told them of just such an end.

Perhaps the twinkling lights of the Canadian river towns and the smiling face of France had never seemed so far away as now in these untraveled stretches of the Great Valley. And the Indian lad--before him lay either death or captivity. In just such scenes as this he had passed from tribe to tribe. It may be that his young mind now carried him back to the village where the smoke rose from the lodges of his own people, where his own mother had unloosed the thongs that bound him to the cradle of his papoose days, and taught him to run over the green prairies and in the cool woods with the other lads, learning to draw a bow and trap wild creatures of the forest and roll about in the sun, naked and healthy and happy.

But this was not a time to think of other days. A handful of young braves threw themselves into the river to seize the small canoes of the white men; but finding the current too strong, they put back to the shore. One raised his club and hurled it at the black-robed priest. Whirling through the air it passed over the canoes and fell with a splash into the river. Nearer and nearer closed the net of enemies about them, until from every side bows began to bend and arrows drew back, tipped with death.

Suddenly their weapons dropped. Older men among them, perhaps recognizing for the first time the pipe of peace which Marquette still held, restrained the impetuous young braves. Coming to the water's edge as the white men drew nearer, two chiefs tossed their bows and quivers into the canoes and invited the strangers to come ashore in peace.

With signs and gestures Indians and white men talked. In vain did Marquette try, one after another, the six Indian languages which he knew. At length there came forward an old man who spoke a broken Illinois tongue. Through him Marquette asked many questions about the lower river and the sea. But the Indians only replied that the strangers could learn all they wished at a village of the Arkansas Indians, about ten leagues farther down the stream. The explorers were fed with sagamite and fish; and, not without some fear, they spent the night in the Indian village.

The next morning they continued their journey, taking the old man with them as an interpreter; and ahead of them went a canoe with ten Indians. They had not gone many leagues when they saw two canoes coming up the river to meet them. In one stood an Indian chief who held a calumet and made signs of peace. Chanting a strange Indian song, he gave the white men tobacco to smoke and sagamite and bread made from Indian corn to eat. Under the direction of their new guides the Frenchmen soon came to the village of the Arkansas, which lay near the mouth of the river of that name.

Here under the scaffold of the chief they were given seats on fine rush mats. In a circle about them were gathered the elders of the tribe; and around about the elders were the warriors; and beyond the warriors in a great crowd were the rest of the tribe eager to see and hear the strange men who had come down from the north. Among the young men was one who spoke the Illinois tongue better than the old man, and through him Marquette talked to the tribe. In his talk he told of the white man's religion, and of the great French chief who had sent them down the valley of the Mississippi.

Then he asked them all manner of questions about the trip to the sea. Was it many days' journey now? And what tribes were on the way?

It was only on occasions like this that the Indian boy understood what was said, for usually his companions in the canoes spoke the melodious but to him wholly unintelligible French. He now listened to the Illinois tongue with keen interest. The young interpreter was telling of their neighbors to the north and east and south and west. Four days' journey to the west was the village of an Illinois tribe, and to the east were other friendly people from whom they bought hatchets, knives, and beads. But toward the great sea to the south, where the white men wished to go, were their enemies. Savage tribes with guns barred them from trade with the Spaniards. All along the lower river the fierce tribes were continually fighting; and woe betide the white men if they ventured farther, for they would never return.

As the Indians told of the dangers of the river below the mouth of the Arkansas River, large platters of wood were continually being brought in, heaped with sagamite, Indian corn, and the flesh of dogs. Nor did the feast end before the close of day.

Meditating upon the warnings of their hosts, the white men made ready for the night. When they had retired on beds raised about two feet from the ground at the end of their long bark-covered lodge, the Indians held a secret council. Some of the warriors had looked with envious eyes upon the canoes, clothes, and presents of the whites. Why not fall upon the strangers by night, beat out their brains with skull-crackers or Indian war clubs, and make away with the plunder? To some of the covetous Indians it was a tempting plan. The whites were defenseless and hundreds of leagues from their friends. Who was there to avenge their death?

But to the chief, who had welcomed the visitors with the pipe of peace, the bond of friendship was sacred. He broke up the schemes of the treacherous braves, dismissed the council, and sent for the white men. Then with the pipe of peace in his hand he danced before the strangers the sacred calumet dance; and as he closed the ceremony he gave into the hands of Marquette the calumet. It was a token, sacred among all Indians, that peace should not be broken, and that the whites would be unharmed.

The Frenchmen, however, did not sleep much. Joliet and the priest sat up far into the night and counseled together as to whether they should go on to the sea or turn back. They were now very near to the sea, they thought--so near that they were confident that the river continued southward to the Gulf of Mexico, instead of turning to the west or east to the Vermilion Sea or the Atlantic Ocean. Indeed, they believed that in two or three days they might reach the Gulf.

But in the country between the mouth of the Arkansas and the mouth of the Mississippi skulked fierce and murderous tribes; while not far away were the Spaniards. Should they fall into the hands of enemies and lose their lives, who would tell to France the story of their marvelous journeyings? Their beloved nation would lose all knowledge of their expedition and therefore all claim to the Great Valley by right of their exploration. Then, too, there seemed little more to be learned in traveling the balance of the way to the mouth. Joliet was anxious to report to his government the story of the expedition, and Marquette was full of eagerness to tell his brother priests of the Indians whom he had met and the great work that lay open to their missionary efforts.

As a matter of fact, the voyagers were many a long day's journey from the river's mouth. But happy in the thought that they were nearly there, Joliet and the priest at last determined to turn back upstream and carry to New France the wonderful tale of their pioneer voyage down the great untraveled river.

THE CAPTIVE RELEASED

It was about the middle of July, 1673, when the Arkansas Indians saw the band of white men leave their village to start out upon the return voyage. The weeks that followed their departure from the Arkansas town were full of toil for the voyagers; for now in the heat of summer they must paddle against the current of the greatest of American rivers. At length, coming to the mouth of the Illinois and believing that it offered a shorter route than the one by which they had come, they turned into its waters and paddled up its smooth stream toward the Lake.

In the course of this journey up the Illinois River they came one day, with great surprise, to a village in whose lodges lived the same Peoria Indians whom they had last seen on the other side of the Mississippi, in the town on the bank of the Iowa River. The Peorias, too, were surprised to see the seven white men and the Indian boy come paddling up the stream.

Here the tired voyagers were welcomed with such hospitality that they lingered for three days in the village. The Indian boy renewed old acquaintances, while Marquette passed from lodge to lodge, telling the Indians of the God of the French who had guarded them in their long journey and protected them from pestilence and the disasters of the river, and from torture and murder by hostile tribes of Indians. The Peorias in turn told the priest of their brother tribes along the Illinois River and of the wars they waged together against the Sacs and Foxes of the North and the bands of Iroquois from the East. But as they looked into the face of the priest, they saw lines of suffering and sickness, and they knew that he had not borne with ease the long and arduous trip.

When the voyagers made ready to depart, the Indians gathered at the river bank to bid them good-bye. As they were about to embark, some Indians brought to the edge of the stream a sick child and asked Father Marquette to baptize it. With great joy the priest complied, for it was the first and, indeed, the only baptism on the whole summer's voyage. A few minutes later the little child died.

The canoes were then pushed into the stream, the men dipped their paddles, and, rounding a point of land a short distance up the stream, disappeared from view. The group of Indians turned back to the village, bearing the body of the dead child. They wrapped it tenderly in the skins of wild animals and laid it away on a scaffold of poles high above the reach of prowling wolves.

Autumn came upon the land and through the fallen leaves along the shore the young Indians passed back and forth among the villages on the Illinois. From the Kaskaskias, who dwelt farther up the river, the Peorias learned that Marquette and Joliet had stopped at the upper village, and that the black robe had promised to come again and preach to them. Moreover, when they left this village, one of the chiefs of the nation, with a band of his own men, went with them up the river, across the portage, and as far as the Lake of the Illinois--as they then called Lake Michigan. There they left the white men paddling valiantly up the west shore toward Green Bay and the Jesuit Mission of St. Francis Xavier.

The Indian boy soon began to understand and talk the language of the white men, and by the end of the winter he could even read and write a little in French. He was quick to learn the ways of the Frenchmen; and his many attractive qualities endeared him to Joliet.

When the spring of 1674 came on, Joliet and several Frenchmen embarked in a canoe and began the descent of the Great Lakes. They were bound for the home of the governor of New France at Quebec, high on the rocks beside the St. Lawrence. As a gift to the governor, Joliet was taking the Indian boy who had shared his wanderings in the Great Valley.

Joliet and his companions were weeks upon the journey, paddling steadily by lake shore and river, through straits and past wooded islands. Only once were they compelled to carry their canoe over a portage. At last they came near to the town of Montreal, with the high hill rising up behind it. They were nearly home now, and the heart of Joliet must have leaped high as he thought of the long months he had spent on his perilous journey. Soon he would come in triumph before Frontenac, governor of Canada, and tell him of his explorations and put into his hands his map and papers and the precious journal of his voyage. These documents lay beside him in the bottom of the canoe in a box, together with some relics of the far-away valley of the Mississippi.

Only La Chine Rapids--the Sault St. Louis as they were then called--lay between the voyagers and Montreal, and then the road was clear and smooth to the high rock of Quebec. The canoe entered the swift-running water. Foam-covered rocks swept past them. Many a time had Joliet passed through these rapids. Probably, after all the perils through which he had safely come on the Great River, he looked only with joy upon this familiar rush of waters. Perhaps to the Indian boy came the thought of the demon whom his people feared in the surging waters of the Mississippi. Surely another such demon lived in this troubled passage, with death in its relentless grasp.

As if to prove real the fears of the Indian, the demon of the water reached out a great wet arm and overturned the frail canoe. Tossed into the fierce current were Joliet and his French boatmen, the Indian boy, and the precious box of papers; while downstream went blindly bobbing the bark canoe. Wildly the men struggled in the rushing stream, the current all the while wrenching at their legs and playing with their feeble efforts. Joliet fought till the breath was gone from his lungs and the strength from his limbs. Then he lost consciousness.

The unpitying sun made a long arc in the heavens above the tossing human bodies. Four hours had Joliet been in the water when fishermen pulled him out on shore and brought him back to life. Two of his men were drowned; and his precious box of papers lay somewhere beneath the rushing waters.

And the Indian boy? He, too, had given up to the evil spirit of the rapids. No more would he pass like a waif from tribe to tribe; no longer would he try with eyes and tongue and fingers to learn the ways of his new white friends. Forever he had left the rolling hills and streams of the Great Valley, the green prairies so full of sunshine, and the woods so full of game. He had passed to the happy hunting-ground of his people.

THE BLACK GOWN

In the valley of the Mississippi it was summer again. Father Marquette, still sick, had not come back to the Illinois tribes. The Peorias and Kaskaskias, in their two villages on the Illinois River, lived comfortable, happy lives, for theirs was a beautiful and fertile valley in these sunny summer months. In the rich soil of the prairies the Indian women had planted seeds which had been carefully preserved from the year before. And now in the fields the young girls were working among the long rows of Indian corn and tending the bean-vines. In their season melons and squashes grew plentifully. The woods along the river were full of game; and in the quiet water of the Illinois, fish by the hundred swam to and fro, an easy target for the swift-winged arrow of the Indian youth. Far back on the plains roamed great herds of buffalo, which afforded both sport and food for the Indians. When fall came, the Indians would surround a herd of buffalo and then set fire to the prairie, taking care to leave an open space by which the frightened animals could escape. As the big animals passed out through this break in the circle of fire, they were easily shot by the Indian hunters.

All up and down the river and over on the Lake of the Illinois, the winter of 1674 fell upon the land with stinging fierceness. The air was so cold that it was almost brittle. The winds howled and swept through the valley with gusts that drove the Indians chilled to their firesides; while the snow, as it piled higher and higher, often brought despair to the men scattered far and wide on their long winter hunts. Sometimes the deer were so lean as to be scarcely worth the shooting. From the Mississippi to the cold shores of the Lakes the men of the Illinois tribes were hunting and trapping and trading furs.

One day during this bleak winter there came striding into the village of the Kaskaskias an Indian of great note among the Illinois. He was Chassagoac, the famous Kaskaskia chief and fur trader. Having just come from the upper shores of Lake Michigan, he reported that near Green Bay he had come upon Father Marquette with two Frenchmen, setting out at last for the villages of the Illinois. Coming into camp with a deer on his back, he had shared his meat with these white men and on the next day had set out with them down the west shore of the Lake. The courageous priest was still far from well, but he was determined to keep his promise to the Illinois Indians. Accompanied by a number of Illinois men who were out on the winter hunt, and by the Illinois women who had packed the canoes and equipments across the portage from Green Bay to the Lake, the party made their way slowly southward along the shore.

Father Marquette spent part of the time teaching the Indians; while his two men, Pierre and Jacques, mended the guns of the Indian hunters and went out with them in search of game. Their canoes were too frail to stand much of the weather that now hung about the edge of the Lake. Floating ice drove them ashore again and again. Rain, sleet, and fierce, chilling winds kept them off the water for days at a time, while deep snows impeded their progress on land.

Early in December, they reached the mouth of the Chicago River, where, moving inland a few leagues, the white men built a rude cabin and made ready to encamp for the winter. Marquette still suffered greatly and could go no farther. Here Chassagoac and his Illinois followers left the party and came on to the village; but not before they had bought of the whites, for three fine beaver skins, a cubit of the French tobacco. Then they had journeyed on to bring the news that the Black Gown would come in the spring. Great was the rejoicing among the Illinois.

Weeks had passed when Jacques, the priest's servant, came to one of the Illinois camps and told of how the Black Gown lay sick in the cabin near the Lake. Thereupon the Indians sent back a delegation with corn and dried meat and pumpkins and beaver skins. With these presents they asked for powder and other merchandise. The priest replied that he had come to encourage peace--that he did not wish them to make war upon the Miamis--and so he could not send them powder; but he loaded them down for their twenty-league journey with hatchets and knives and beads and mirrors.

Now it happened that there were two white traders who had also ventured into the land of the Illinois; and from their cabins they brought supplies to the sick priest. One of these men, who called himself a surgeon, stayed awhile at the lonely cabin of Marquette, glad to hear mass and do what he could to relieve the sufferings of the black-gowned father.

It was with exceeding great joy that the white men in their cabin near the Lake and the Indians in their hunting-camps and villages along the river welcomed the warmer winds from the south that broke up the ice in the river and unlocked the wintry hold that had bound the land. Wild animals appeared and meat became plentiful once more. The snow melted down into rushing streams or sank into the friendly earth. As the sun became warmer at midday, the Indian women prepared for the season of planting.

On the 8th day of April, in the year 1675, a shout of welcome went up in the Kaskaskia village, for the long-expected priest had come. This quiet man, kind of face and gentle of manner, found himself among friends who looked with sorrow at the signs of sickness graven upon his patient face. They knew as well as he that he had not many months to live. But they saw also upon his face a wonderful joy, for the priest had accomplished the one great purpose that had upheld him in the weary weeks of suffering--he had come again to preach to the Illinois Indians.

In one cabin after another the good Father spoke to the chiefs and warriors who gathered to hear him. Finding the cabins too small, he held a great meeting in the open air on a broad level prairie. Here the whole village gathered. The chiefs and elders seated themselves next to the priest; and around them stood hundreds of young Indian braves; and still farther from the centre of the vast circle of red men were gathered the women and children of the tribe. For a long time he talked to them, and with each message he gave them presents after the manner of Indian councils.

This was the last visit of the black-robed priest to the Illinois Indians. His strength soon failed him, and with Jacques and Pierre he started back up the river and across to the Lake, hoping against hope that he might reach the Mission of St. Ignace at Mackinac before he died. Friendly Indians went with them more than thirty leagues of the way, contending with one another for the privilege of carrying his few belongings.

Finally they reached the Lake and embarked. Jacques and Pierre paddled the canoe along the shore, as each day the priest grew weaker. He had always prayed that he might die like his patron saint, St. Francis Xavier, in the far and lonely wilderness of his ministry. One Friday evening, about the middle of May, he told his companions with great joy that he would die on the morrow. As they passed the mouth of a small river, Marquette, pointing to a low hill rising beside it, asked his two men to bury him there.

They carried him ashore and built for his protection a rude cabin of bark. There he died quietly on Saturday, May 18, 1675. He was buried by his two men on the rising knoll which he had chosen; and over his grave they rang his little chapel bell, and erected a rude cross to mark the spot.

Some time later a party of Kiskakon Indians, returning from a hunting trip, came by the site of the lonely grave. They had known Father Marquette years before when he lived on the shores of Lake Superior. Now they determined to carry his remains to the church at the Mission of St. Ignace. Reverently they gathered up the precious bones, dried and prepared them after their own Indian fashion, laid them in a box of birch bark, and bore them in state with a convoy of thirty canoes to the Mission at Mackinac. There in a vault of the church the remains of Father Marquette were laid away with funeral honors; and there priests and traders venerated his memory and Indians came to pray at his tomb.

And out in the valley of the Illinois, the tribes to whom he had made his last pilgrimage mourned the death of their gentle-spirited visitor; and the Peorias, as they went about their daily occupations in fields or lodges, on the prairies or on the streams, often thought of the day in June when the black-robed priest and his French companion had walked up the little pathway and stood out to meet them in the glorious sunshine at their old village on the banks of the Iowa River.

"THE IROQUOIS ARE COMING"

"The Iroquois are coming!" It was a cry that shook the heart of even the boldest among the Illinois Indians. Fierce as the northwest wind in winter, the cruel, bloodthirsty red men from the East had spread terror in their path all along the Great Lakes and out as far as the Mississippi. Down near the mouth of the Ohio, Marquette and Joliet on their memorable voyage in 1673 had found the Shawnee living in deadly fear of the warriors of the Five Nations.

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