Chapter II: Part 2

How like glittering wealth the bright cutting edges of the traders' knives must look to them! By simple pantomime the friar told these savages that many more white men with much more steel were coming to give presents to those who were friendly and to kill those who were not. Then he bent his neck with humility, bared it, and offering Narrhetoba one of the sharp axes, cried, "Dare you to cut off a white man's head?"

At that a hush fell on the group. Across the spring sunshine falling through the leaves came a sparrow's song. One long moment passed in hesitation.

Aquipaguetin longed to try a knife in just such use. But Narrhetoba, who held the ax, was of another generation. He had a commercial spirit. He saw a long line of white traders from whom he might gain more in barter than he could from these three by violence. He withheld his hand. By so doing he then and there split the warrior band into two sections--those whose motives were like Aquipaguetin's, robbery through murder; and those who, like Narrhetoba, preferred the safer and greater gain by exploitation.

Father Louis bellowed at them in his biggest pulpit voice. The still aisles of the forest began to resound with his words: "I am resolved to allow myself to be killed without resistance. Behold the example I set you! I come to convert the heathen."

Not one word could his listeners understand. But Narrhetoba nodded his approval of this speech. He liked the spirit of the friar.

Accau began to take on hope for his skin and his goods. Anthony, who had been sweating in cold drops, shook himself warm again and unscrewed his drawn brows. "Perhaps I can placate Aquipaguetin, who is cross at missing his kill." And the boy raised his pistol. In the gaping sight of all he fired into a flock of wild turkeys which was whirling heavily across the open shore space near where the council stood. Two fell from the single shot.

The savages fell upon the game like roaches on a crumb. The feathered victims were pulled and torn apart. Indians who had never seen a gun examined the wonder of that shot. The birds' bones were broken as no arrow could do it. How desirable one of those iron "lightning sticks" would be for crippling an enemy!

Aquipaguetin seemed to be telling them that one gun in the hand was worth any number in the dim future. The braves at Narrhetoba's side snapped back that two guns would not go round. Wait for traders!

Narrhetoba, not looking quite as good a friend as his gestures said he was, soon brought their calumet back to them, made each take a puff, had one himself, and then gave it as a bitter pill to the defeated Aquipaguetin. "Peace among us," was what the smoking meant.

Immediately the canoes were shoved into the water. The explorers were jostled into them as rudely as they had been taken out. Prows were turned up-stream. Anthony took heart. As long as they moved in the direction his duty demanded he could make observations.

Father Louis stood up in the canoe as though he were pronouncing a benediction on those congregated round him and he gravely intoned these words, "I am not sorry to continue the business of making our discoveries in connection with these native inhabitants."

For nineteen of the long, long days of April they were hurried up the river at a furious pace. Peep o' day routed them from their slumbers on the ground. They were given a hasty bit of food and pushed into the canoes. Sometimes they stopped for dinner, sometimes not. Ceaselessly until dusk the paddling continued.

Four miles an hour up-stream! It was a frightful speed! All records for that generation were broken by the muscular Sioux. Ten hours a day! For twice ten days! Anthony grew stupid from the excessive toil. The friar was so jumbled in his note-taking that neither he nor his friends were able to understand some of his words. Poor Accau was worn out with the rough going. "I am always being waked up, yet I never have a chance to go to sleep," he grumbled.

The white men sank exhausted whenever they stopped on shore. But the young Indians, scrawny, sorry-looking specimens whose bodies seemed as despicable as their minds, danced vigorously around the camp-fire half the night singing the same verse of the same song over and over again. The old Indians sat up and applauded by continuous yells until the fires burnt out. Then they stood watch, turn about, until dawn. At sun-up they were wide awake and well started on another day.

Each night Aquipaguetin began a weeping harangue in favor of killing the Frenchmen, only to be out-talked and defrauded of his prey.

Thus through bad days and worse nights the upper Mississippi was first navigated. These three Frenchmen in constant jeopardy discovered and described it. No wonder they named a beautiful body of water they found Lake Pepin (lake of tears) in honor of that sobbing old rascal Aquipaguetin.

Suddenly one day they were set ashore, their canoe smashed, their goods divided among the savage crew, and they themselves herded for a cross-country run.

All that fatigue of rowing upon their arms was as nothing compared with the strain now put upon the white men's legs. Up hill--down dale--over streams--through woods--running--climbing--swimming--they scurried at their best, driven by the tireless savages, who lighted the prairie grass at their heels for the fun of seeing them sprint. Lucky for them that their feet were shod with pluck!

Pell-mell into a native village they came at last. Howling squaws, squealing papooses, yapping dogs burst into chorus to greet them. They saw huts suggesting shelter, steaming pots suggesting food, and a row of tall stakes tied about with dried grass and piled with faggots--suggesting what?

The friar wondered how his name would look written among the martyrs. Accau's eyes followed the goods with which he had been trusted; he would need them no more. Anthony, viewing these preparations for the reception of any prisoners the war party brought, felt as hollow as a drum. "The frying-pan of captivity is better than the fire of those stakes," he thought.

The more frightened a Frenchman is the quicker his wits work, the more his gestures multiply, and the higher his courage rises. The boy stooped and picked up a bunch of feathers blowing near his feet. If he had not seen the feathers he would have taken something else, so short was the time for action and so dire the need.

Into the center of the circle made by the little red blotches of the supper fires he stepped pompously. He thus came into full view of the big chief, Ouasicoude, of all the Sioux. Separating one lock from his curls he thrust a feather half-way into the coil. Apparently intent upon this odd toilet he arranged curl after curl, until the whole tribe, as curious as crows, were giving him their full attention.

Then he turned his irresistible smile toward Ouasicoude and gaily burst into laughter. Still laughing, he began to dance. He changed from laughing into singing--not the slow, mournful, coarse, and angular amusement of the Sioux, but a lively, tuneful jig of Picardy lads.

He was several years older than when he had sung to please the Père Marquette. His voice had settled to a golden barytone. It fell agreeably upon the ears of the most high executioner and he was seized with an idea which at some time or other has awakened in the breast of every king, "Why not have a minstrel at my court?" or, as Ouasicoude put it, "Why not keep loud medicine in my own tepee?"

That Anthony and his companions should live or die, that the trio should be saved to give their discoveries to the world, was nothing to him; that his royal self should be amused was everything.

From the pebble-filled gourd which Aquipaguetin had thrust as a rattle on each of the doomed men, the boy shook out a mocking tune as he danced nearer and nearer to the stakes. At close range he drew his pistol and shot into the dried grass on one of them. As will often happen from such a charge the burning powder set the stuff on fire. It blazed up. Before the astounded savages it consumed itself. This was medicine tremendous! All forgot the original use of the stakes. They wanted this new style of bonfire, and Anthony set them off amid loud applause.

Ouasicoude loudly announced his intention to adopt the singer as his son. Narrhetoba, clever courtier, with an admiring glance at King Charles, immediately followed suit by taking Accau and the dog. Glinting maliciously, Aquipaguetin proclaimed himself the father of the friar, introducing the Franciscan to five squat squaws who were his new mothers because they were this chieftain's wives.

In a twinkling the three explorers became members of the nation. Ouasicoude and Anthony, Narrhetoba and Accau, Aquipaguetin and the Friar Louis are the six Sioux who made this region famous in its early days.

Now, the Sioux had a manitou. Greater than all other manitous it demanded much worship. To this deity, then, the Sioux fathers must present their adopted sons as an act of grace. When the Frenchmen were separated from the other Indians and secretly led to the holy place they were prepared for some solemn form of initiation into the tribe.

The home of the manitou burst in wonder on their eyes. It was a splendid fall of laughing water. In the midst of primeval grandeur the cascade dropped in a peerless sheet of spray forty feet over a limestone ledge. No more beautiful spot for the residence of any manitou could be imagined. He was hidden behind this flashing torrent. He loved sacrifices. To please him the Sioux of all tribes threw many gifts into a deep basin made by a hollow in the rock.

Anthony was weary of captivity. So tiresome and degrading had his days among these savages become that he almost wished he could be lulled to sleep by the voice of the cataract, never to wake again.

But as the boy watched old Aquipaguetin grow more and more fervid in his devotions and saw him twitch his stone club with eager fingers and roll his eyes round and round in search of some living thing which would make a worthy sacrifice, life suddenly seemed very precious to Anthony. He determined that he should not become food for any manitou, no matter how great.

Aquipaguetin's ardor was spreading to the others. They caught his idea. What nobler gifts had ever been given to the deity than these adopted sons would make?

Anthony's first thought for defense was, "I must change my father's point of view." The only remedy he knew for any savages' dangerous notion was to turn their minds to something more startling.

The friar kept a wary front toward his parent-foe; Accau edged close to Anthony; King Charles scented peril and, putting his tail between his legs, sneaked under the waterfall. The hint was unmistakable. Acting upon it, the boy, for his skin's sake, resolved to outwit superstition with superstition.

As Aquipaguetin came toward him with swinging club, the boy pulled his companions within the sacred arc of rainbow spray where no Indian dared follow lest the manitou become enraged.

Anthony then hunched himself into the fanatical pose of an inspired medicine-man. Because he was a capital mimic, as most singers are, his words rang out in the same raving tones their own magician might have used.

Ouasicoude and Narrhetoba paused thunderstruck. They thought the manitou had thrown his mantle of sorcery over these aliens. They fell on their faces and did obeisance to the waterfall. Aquipaguetin was not so sure of the divine nature of Anthony's deed, but he was awed in spite of himself and lowered his club and bent his back, shedding tears of disappointment.

Who would profane a temple or destroy a shrine?

Certainly not Anthony, who had fled to it for sanctuary. The loveliness of the manitou's cascade and the power of its fall were as plain to him as to the savages. Why, then, should not the deity inspire him to prophecy as though he were a votary?

He had sacrificed himself to make the discovery of such useful natural features of the Great River as this waterfall might prove to be. Let it now reward him with a new lease on life that he might give his find to the Empire.

He thought of the brook in Picardy and of the wheels it set to going and he cried in ecstasy to this current of so much greater size:

"Some day, O laughing Water, white men shall put a harness upon you and drive you to work at turning a mill." His fancy set big factories up and down the shore. Yet his dream-workshops were not as huge as the immense roller-mills which now stand in substantial piles, row upon row, where once his imagination builded.

"Over these fertile lands of your sky-blue lakes shall spring up the white man's wheat." It was easy for him to think of the Mississippi shores dotted with farms; the valley conquered by the plow. But he could never have believed it if any one had told him of fields of a thousand acres each, of traction plows, of gasolene reapers, and of steam threshers; the inventions and triumphs of the agricultural Northwest.

"To you, O Miller-manitou, shall all the valleys bring their harvests as food to your grindstones." He imagined a line of French donkeys between panniers carrying wheat to the grinders. What _would_ he have thought of a caterpillar truck and its trailers?

"Apprentices of genius shall teach you how to improve your hoppers and your stones." The Frenchman La Croix, an employee in the early mills along this site, proved to be, of all the clever workmen, the one who invented most of the superior processes which make these mills, where he studied, the models of the industrial world.

"Settlers shall crowd to your feet and towns rise around you."

He was thinking of the hamlets of Picardy or perhaps of something like the metropolis of Amiens. Of such a capital as St. Paul or a city like Minneapolis he had no idea.

"Old World gold shall be poured into your sacrificial basin."

One page of statistics showing the annual income of the modern mills would have read to him, as it does to many others, like a page from the log of a Spanish treasure ship. Anthony exaggerated the power of the falls and the prosperity of the country to the limit of his imagination. That they would finally both be greater than his prophesy no sane man of his time would have dared to say.

His oration was having a fine effect upon the listening Indians. He could see that from the corner of his eye. He was sure they would not dare to harm him now. Although they might not understand his words, the all-knowing manitou could, of course, and that was enough for them. As he stepped out to join them his last words, impossible as they seemed, were of practical business worth and part of them are still official:

"Then, O idle manitou, when you are worn down and flattened by the toil of serving the race which tamed you, men shall forget your youthful beauty and your sacred title, a prosaic commercial nation shall know you only by that name with which I now take possession of you in the name of France--all persons here present as consenting witnesses. You, as a busy miller, shall be called for me and for my patron saint the Falls of St. Anthony!"

Whether the explorers had done a good day's work in discovering the wheat lands and the water to develop them, let the farmers and the millers and the cities of Minnesota say.

Any one who noticed the gaily feathered foster-fathers and their equally decorated sons as they trotted homeward toward the tepees, outlined in every detail of feature and costume against the red northern sunset, single file, toeing in, stone clubs dangling, could be certain that a feast was in preparation and that he saw six satisfied Sioux.

IV

HUNTERS ALL

A Chase of the Buffalo Herds in the Prairie Tribes of Michael
Accau--Flight of the Fur Traders

ONE little, two little, three little Indians, four little, five little, six little Indians, seven little, eight little, nine little Indians, ten little Indian boys sat in a bark tepee and yapped in chorus with King Charles as Father Louis, holding up his friar's gown, exercised his sandaled feet and bare shanks at a brisk pace up and down in front of them.

As he paused for breath, "Taketchiabihen?" he demanded, "Taketchiabihen?"

The little Indians and the dog shrilled again with the same crass sounds. Rubbing his ears when he had had enough of this word, the friar pulled out his note-book and jotted down some letters.

Anthony had chanced to see this performance as he came to the door flap. His eyebrows and dimples, his curls and teeth were a whole page of question marks and exclamation points. Père Louis answered him as though he had spoken: "I am making a dictionary of the Sioux language. This is the word for _run_," and he showed the unspellable and unpronounceable yelp with which the children had answered his hiccoughing, "What is this?"

As the friar mopped his forehead Anthony's brows came down and his smile widened. "How did you manage to get them to help you?" he inquired.

Father Louis sighed as he explained: "When the mothers saw me use my razor they decided that the steel edge would shave the heads of the boys better than the sharp hot stones they had always used for that purpose. I am not allowed my dinner until I tonsure these fledgling braves all around their scalp-locks. In my turn I will not shave them until they tell me some new words. By reciprocity, then, does the dictionary grow. Some day I may be able to converse in the language of the Sioux. I can already understand something of what will be said to me by the gentleman yonder." He indicated a warped red thief who had put a pair of wretched legs through the armholes of the friar's elegant chasuble and was wearing it upside down. It was fastened comfortably in this position by a pair of suspenders made of the Franciscan cord.

Anthony was scandalized. But Father Louis had become resigned to slight mishaps like stolen clothes; too many worse things had happened in the three months of his captivity.

He led Anthony to another irregular hut, where the boy was placed side by side with the over-dressed person in the semi-religious style of suit. The friar was needed to baptize a sick papoose. The Père Louis' tolerance and sense of duty so affected Anthony that his awkward arms were very gentle. He was filled with pity and quite forgot the grotesque figure beside him in helping the tiny dying creature under his hands. He could not find it in his heart to object when the grateful friar named the child Antoinette in honor of her pale-face godfather.

Father Louis went promptly to the next business in hand, "Do you, Anthony, please keep the children out of mischief for a minute while I pack," he said. Anthony, half crying in sorrow for the expiring child and half laughing in disgust at the living ones, got his pocket compass. The magnetic needle was the one thing that scared the little Indians into decent behavior. Their fathers had told them it was a magic spirit which guided the white men over lands where no trails led. All the Sioux, large and small, quaked before its quivering point.

By its threat the meddlesome hands were warned away from the friar's sleeves whose pocket cuffs were the only trunks he carried. He was going with Anthony to join a concourse of the Sioux hunters setting out in pursuit of buffalo.

News that the migrating herds were coming their way had set the Indians, now very short of food, into a frenzy of preparation. Away they all went in a bedlam, men and women, children and dogs, to the shores of the Great River, where they rioted in the camps by night and chased the buffalo on the outlying plains by day.

Every woman had her own pottery cooking-vessel. Savory stew was served at any hour in the twenty-four. Surplus meat was dried in the smoke of her smudges as she "jerked" it for future use.

Each child took part in this annual event. The tenth little Indian, the smallest hunter that ever stood in moccasins, had his own arrows and a buffalo calf for practice.

Pelts piled up like bales. Accau counted them by dozens.

If any one had told Anthony that in the beginning of the twentieth century a North American Indian of the Carlisle School would hold the world's record for all-around athletic prowess he certainly would have nodded that he believed it. "Day after day," he said, "the lithe Narrhetoba, with a single bow, set his nimble feet to the sport of running down a buffalo and his deft hands to the game of slaying it by means of a stone-tipped arrow. That is more than I can do."

It was _too_ easy for that active chieftain. He was bored with the old-fashioned exercise. He longed for the white man's steel and the new sensations to come in using a gun.

The friar and Anthony proposed to him, "Allow us to take a canoe and go down to the mouth of the Wisconsin in search of the traders the Sieur La Salle had promised to send after us." Both Narrhetoba and Ouasicoude agreed to do this. So Anthony and Père Louis slipped quietly away.

Accau stayed as hostage. He had a faint hope of retrieving some of his goods in the possession of these people, or, what was better, to get in place of his trinkets a cargo of buffalo-skins. His business eye saw the pelts growing in value during the hunt. Even the littlest Indian's calf-skin would be worth money _if_ he caught it. And the bereaved parent who had shed the chasuble but kept the handy Franciscan cord acquired a sumptuous collection which Accau coveted.

"The capitals of Europe are clamoring for pelts from the New World. The princes and nobility of civilization admire the soft skins with which savages adorned themselves," he repeated over and over.

"The fur trade of the colonies promised to make the mother country rich. Ever since those daring young adventurers, the Sieurs De Radisson and Groseilliers, plunged into the northwestern wilds in 1654 and at the end of two years came out again in spectacular parade with three hundred Algonquins and sixty canoes, bringing forty thousand dollars' worth of pelts, all fortune-hunters had been eager to do something of the same kind."

Those first successful Frenchmen arranged a business alliance with some Englishmen and became the promoters of the Hudson Bay Company, which had immense influence in the early times and which to-day still buys furs of the Indians and sells them in the courts of kings.

Other companies were organized and the industry thrived. St. Louis on the Mississippi finally came to be the center of a fur trade carrying on one of those big businesses which are the pride of the United States.

Private speculators went into the trade with zest. Almost any person who had capital enough to buy a canoe, arm and munitions, supplies, cutlery and beads, would outfit a _coureur de bois_ and encourage him to try his luck.

Almost half of these _voyageurs_ perished in the wilderness. Romance, adventure, freedom, license, and wealth were the bait to lure them. Panthers, Indians, snakes, malaria, and rapids were the traps that caught them.

Accau liked the trader's life and as long as he could stay by the fruits of this Sioux hunt he meant to do so. His employer, the Sieur La Salle, expected the buffalo herds to pay the expenses of settling and developing the valley of the Great River. Accau kept near the front of the chase, and because they were without definite plans it was not hard to lead the Sioux with more and more rapidity down the banks of the river in the direction the friar and Anthony had taken and toward the spot where the traders might appear.

A pageant now took possession of the upper Mississippi. As it passed the hidden creatures of the wild watched with bright, frightened eyes the enemies who were to affect so powerfully all those species in furry clothes.

First came Father Louis Hennepin and Anthony Auguelle, the Picard du Gay. They held the key to the northwest regions. Maps and observations, a new language and the right of discovery were all theirs.

Next, close on their trail, silently and secretly, sneaked old Aquipaguetin and ten of his warriors. They had the nine points which possession gives. They would not let any prisoners escape, no matter how reasonable their excuses might sound. No strangers should get away to tell the white race the secrets of the Sioux.

Far out of sight behind the warriors the hunting party, lured by King Charles's antics and Accau's purpose, straggled along the shore. A fortune in pelts was carelessly dragging in their untidy baggage.

Last of all there came swiftly down the stream a third canoe. Its appearance was one of those accidents which change the course of large events. In it were two Indian guides, a French gentleman and four of his followers.

The gentleman was the Sieur DuLuth. He was an agent for one of the Canadian fur companies and had been spending a year in the neighborhood of the west end of Lake Superior. He had planted the French arms in the waters where the first tributaries of the Mississippi rise and had claimed much new soil and found many haunts of small fur-bearing animals.

He was now roving south by way of the St. Croix River. It emptied into a magnificent stream, which he guessed must be the fabled Father of Waters. He stopped there to gossip with the squaws he saw. They told him that on this Great River some white men, prisoners of the Sioux, were only two days distant.

Sieur DuLuth knew the uncertain temper of the Sioux. Indeed it has never changed. There are old men now living on the shore where the Sieur DuLuth stood who can tell of their own youthful part in the Sioux wars of the 1860's when the Minnesota tribes behaved very much as Anthony saw them do.

"We must go to the rescue of these white men," the Sieur DuLuth had promptly decided, "and join forces with them. Together we will be able to interest the Indians in trading and so persuade them to make treaties."

In the mean time, Anthony and the friar were in doleful plight. They had no stores. Ten charges of powder were their only ammunition. They planned to keep it for self-defense. Instead of shooting game, they snared fish, captured turtles, chased woodchuck. Hunger was a constant companion. Wild fruits, of unknown species, made them ill. The hope of meeting the traders buoyed them. They bore each hardship as though it had been a blessing and went bravely on.

Little thinking that some one was all this time steadily following his course, coming nearer and nearer, Anthony seldom looked back.

One day he glanced up from the cooking of a scanty dinner. Peering at him over the edge of the bank were the eyes of an Indian. At least he thought it was an Indian, but when he went to look he found nothing.

At supper-time, farther down the stream, he had the uncanny feeling of being watched. He advanced slowly toward the brink. The dismay in his face was reflected by the friar, for Aquipaguetin rose up and confronted them. He should have been hundreds of miles away. Every little hair on Anthony's body stirred separately as he wondered how long that revengeful savage had been within club-throwing distance.

With a single gesture the chief bade them stand still. A stone club and evil scowl emphasized his meaning. A painted warrior came over the river's bank and stood beside him. The warrior wore a tremendous bonnet. It stuck gay feathers aloft and dangled them all the way to the ground. Beads by the dozen, from Accau's precious stores, made him twinkle like a jeweler's window. He was fully armed. Another in similar garb came and joined the two; then another and another.

The explorers had no inkling of what these Indians meant to do. It was hard for Anthony to keep a cool and indifferent attitude until ten savages in gorgeous array had slowly appeared and formed themselves into a background for Aquipaguetin.

They were dressed for some special occasion. Indians are masters of the language of signs. The old chief, by a few pointings here and there and a motion or two, gave them to understand that he was on his way down the river to the mouth of the Wisconsin.

"Are you on your way to meet the traders?" asked the friar in a sentence which he thought excellent Sioux.

Aquipaguetin was.

"You wily old strategist!" cried Anthony. "If the traders come you want to get first choice of their goods. If they don't come you will be ahead of us on the river to cut off our escape: How I hate you!"

All the warriors nodded solemnly at Anthony. What a pity they didn't understand his language!

They circled around to show the white men how many and strong they were. The chief repeated his command for the Frenchmen not to follow him and hurried away. All the warriors trailed after him.

Anthony and the friar went at breakneck speed in the opposite direction to protect themselves by again joining the hunting party. How utterly downcast they would have been could they have known that the Sieur La Salle's traders would never keep the tryst on which all the captives' thoughts were fixed.

For that fort had come to extremity. No sooner had the commandant gone for food and munitions to sustain them than the dozen knaves in the stockade, who outnumbered the honest men, had mutinied. They burned the fort, stole all the valuables they could carry. Everything else they threw into the river. The peaceful Indians camped round about the fort had been massacred by warlike tribes and their hamlets burned. Desolation reigned.

Where now the beautiful American city of Peoria stands, there were only ashes, bones, and the memory of the ill-starred Fort Crevecoeur.

Accau became alarmed when he found out that Aquipaguetin had also gone down the river. He led the hunting party more rapidly in that direction and constantly watched for his friends.

Great was his relief to see them returning. But when he could discover no traders with them he was filled with foreboding.

As Anthony and the friar paddled up to the camp it looked like home to them. The summer sky, the sweet west wind, the billowing plain, the bronze hunters, the odor of the squaws' cooking-pots, the voices of children were all sources of delight.

At their approach the cheerful racket died down; the tribe stood still; all interest focused in one question. "Where are the traders?" The friar shook his head; an ominous silence followed. King Charles ran forward barking welcome. No one else was glad to see them.

Anthony begged: "We are hungry. Give us food."

"Where are the traders?" came the sullen chorus.

"We did not find them," was Père Louis' apology.

Narrhetoba's brow grew dark. Ouasicoude's silence was appalling.

At this unhappy moment who should whirl round a bend in full sight of the hunters but the Nemesis, Aquipaguetin!

In the few days that it had taken Anthony and the friar to reach the camp, the old chief, taxing to the utmost those famous paddle muscles of his warriors, had gone down to the mouth of the Wisconsin, found no traders, turned himself about and came back again at double speed in rage supreme.

He leaped ashore. The armed force of his warriors filed in fierce array on his heels.

"White men are liars!" he thundered. "There are no traders!"

The warriors, with long groans, burst into tears.

The hunters caught up their weapons. They rushed at the Frenchmen. Squaws stirred their fires--something more interesting than food was promised for a roasting. The ten little Indians hopped up and down with joy at the prospect of savage sport.

The story of the northern Mississippi, all the hard-won knowledge of its course, might have been blotted out then and there. Three lives could have vanished in faggot smoke and left no trace.

But the Sieur DuLuth was energetic with his paddles also. The Sioux too often meant mischief. The Frenchmen might need him. White men who met Sioux generally _did_ require help.

In the midst of the powwow--for Indians can seldom do anything without a powwow--the third canoe appeared upon the river.

How like guardian angels the weather-beaten faces of the new-comers looked to the doomed men; how much sweeter than any music was the Sieur DuLuth's shout: "We are traders! Friends to the red men and friends to the white!"

The camp exploded with glee. Everybody, even Aquipaguetin, scrambled to the water's edge. DuLuth and his men were pulled ashore and embraced ecstatically. Greedy eyes feasted on his bulging stores. How they loved him! What affection they had for all white men!

They underwent violent reaction. "Get out the peace-pipes," was one command. "Bring on a feast," was another.

To the savages gloating over the prospect of bartering their buffalo-skins for weapons and trinkets it was an unimportant detail that these two parties of Frenchmen to whom New France looked for the establishment of a vast business should be meeting for the first time.

Traders had been promised; traders had come: that was enough for them.

All the little Indians and a hundred big ones hastened to show their gratitude. Friendship between the two races was established straightway. Ouasicoude uttered the ultimatum of the Sioux: "The Frenchmen are welcome to all the fur they can carry. We will give them much food. They may go when they please and where they like. They are free!"

V

MANY MOUTHS

Shooting Big Game for the Servants of the King under Robert Cavelier de
La Salle--Fit Gifts for a King.

"EGGS!" cried Anthony, "Eggs!" He licked his lips. "I have not tasted an egg for a long time," and he smiled his gayest at an Indian who was carrying in both hands a dish hastily made from a palmetto leaf.

The savage was proud of his find and a little more excited than even fresh eggs seemed to warrant. But then he was a southern Indian and they are always more emotional than northern ones. He was a present from some Indian village lately visited by this party of the Sieur La Salle's with whom Anthony was now exploring and he may have wanted to call attention to himself as a useful and important person.

"They look rather queer," Anthony touched them with an inquiring finger; "some sort of wild hen may have laid them. They look something like turtle eggs."

"No. Not turtle," the Indian was sure of that. He stated their name positively.

Anthony had never heard the word. He called an interpreter. That worthy could pronounce the word which was new to him also. He could explain at second hand that it meant a creature living sometimes on land and sometimes in the water, very large and dangerous.

"Oh, nonsense," laughed Anthony, "it would not take a very big bird to lay those eggs. You should see a really large one like an ostrich. Go bring another Indian, for I'm sure we do not understand each other." He put the dish down in the sand near the camp-fire as he waited. Sometimes it was necessary to hunt an interpreter to interpret the interpreters.

It was nearly dinner-time and the whole of the Sieur La Salle's train, two dozen Frenchmen, a dozen and a half of Indians, ten squaws and three papooses and a guide or so hurried up to stare hungrily at the palmetto leaf, while the owner of this treasure trove, in a frenzy of words, tried to tell them that a fierce manitou as big as a man and wicked enough to bite a boat in two had laid those eggs. They must not be eaten.

This was unwelcome news to the cook, to whom the beautiful southern reaches of the Great River were not yielding as much foodstuff as she needed for her table.

Sieur La Salle had a cool, scientific interest in every form of life. He listened carefully to the Indian because he wanted to learn all he could of real and fancied fauna.

Henry Tonty, a captain and the Sieur La Salle's most devoted aide, was second in command. He watched with much amusement. Fantastic notions such as Indians delight in often caught his ready sympathy.

And the priest of the expedition, Father Membre, felt it his duty to keep his ears open when a heathen manitou was mentioned.

From the leader down to the tiniest papoose anything that had to do with meals claimed full attention.

How long the talk might have lasted it would be hard to tell had not Mother Nature herself chosen this moment to hatch those eggs. Warm sand and sunshine and fire were her helpers. This was what the Indian wished. He was more than satisfied at the astonishment of the northerners when there emerged, not fledglings, but squirming lizards.

"El-lagarto!" cried Tonty in Spanish. "Ha! They are crocodiles. Destroy them."

The Father laughed with contempt, "We need not be afraid of such tiny crocodiles, nor of the manitou they breed."

As Anthony recoiled from the wriggling mites he knew by the stirring of his curls that the Indian might be justified in his dread of the manitou.

The Sieur La Salle gave the Indian a special present for the timeliness of his warning and issued the command, "No swimming in the bayous, no jumping from boats to floating logs, no paddle hands trailing in the water."

Anthony was filled with creeping nerves. He could not eat the ration doled out to him at the dinner, which did _not_ include eggs. He shook and shook, partly with the chill which precedes the fever of malaria and partly with the shiver the reptiles gave him.

But he was normal again when the full moon came shining through the moss-draped branches of the live-oaks. The odor of jessamine, the song of the mocking-bird, the silver water rolling past, the easy bed of shore grass, the vespers of the peeper frogs, the altar candles of the fireflies, all combined to make him love the southland and to wonder why Canadians stayed in ice-bound Canada when France could give them homes in such balmy lands as this.

The Sieur La Salle, who was leading them down the river, was young, handsome, educated, titled, and rich. Honors and pleasures were at his hand if he lived in his native country; but he had one of those brave hearts which desired to sacrifice itself for France in the front trenches of the New World.

More than any other one discovery France felt that she needed to have a western water route to the trade of the Orient mapped out. Sieur La Salle had undertaken to find some northwest passage through this new American continent which barred the way. The king gave him a seigniory on the Saint Lawrence River. It was named La Chine to remind him of his ambition to achieve a short cut to China. He explored far and near.

He finally decided from what he heard through the Indians that a man in a canoe, with a few portages, could go from one side of the continent to the other by water. Starting at the mouth of the Saint Lawrence on the Atlantic, sailing through the Great Lakes, down any one of several tributaries to the Mississippi, then up the Missouri, then into the La Platte, from its headwaters to those of the Colorado, down to the Gulf of California, he could at last dip into the Pacific. That route is still open, but there had never been a deep waterway for ocean-going ships until the Panama Canal was begun by the French in 1880 and completed by the United States in 1914. So the Sieur La Salle hunted in vain.

When legends of the Mississippi began to reach him he hoped that the great sea into which it was said to empty might be the Pacific. The Sieur Joliet's voyage proved that it had some southern instead of a western outlet.

The Sieur Joliet's maps, the Père Marquette's diary, Friar Hennepin's descriptions, Accau's business reports, the Sieur DuLuth's estimate of fur-bearing animals, all combined to interest the Empire in developing the Great River valley. The Sieur La Salle received most of the help he asked for when he began to plan a French port at the mouth of the river which could be open to traffic all the year round and could afford an ocean carry for the products of the valley.

At Niagara he built a ship called the _Griffen_, the first to sail the Great Lakes, but it was lost before it could get into the ocean to go to the Mississippi's mouth. Another ship coming to him from France went down in the Saint Lawrence. These huge misfortunes forced him to abandon the idea of deep-water vessels for his first voyage on the Mississippi. He used the only things he could get--the same old birch-bark canoes which the natives had always had. They could not carry the profitable cargoes of the bigger ships, but they might serve to find a port.

In them, partly because they were fitted to the river and partly because they were manned by Indians who understood their navigation, the Sieur La Salle and his retinue were now making a happy voyage. They had come down by way of the Illinois River, offering friendship to the hospitable Indian villages and scaring the hostile ones into allegiance by a fine show of state.

On this particular day they were far below the last point touched by the Sieur Joliet, and Anthony's gray eyes grew wider and wider as he viewed the semi-tropical scenes and marveled at the ever-broadening expanse of the river so truly great.

Soon they came to a place where the main stream divided into three. The party separated; several boats for each of the new currents would speed the journey's end. Sieur La Salle took the right-hand one. Perhaps he was hoping against hope for some western outlet.

When the fleet came together again it was upon salt water. Blue, sparkling, and invigorating, the water and the air of the Gulf of Mexico filled them with joy.

"Past this gulf the Spanish galleons go back to the Old World heavily laden with the gold of their new lands. From this port we can ship cargoes of furs almost as valuable as theirs. Nearly a century and a half ago the Spaniards saw this region, but they have never fortified nor possessed it," said the Sieur La Salle to his officers. "We will now take it under the protection of our Empire."

Jubilant over their luck, they began to prepare for a formal claim.

During the bustle an Indian signaled to Anthony and he withdrew to let the savage whisper in his ear, "Do you remember the eggs?"

Anthony grimaced to show that he did.

"El-lagarto," repeated the Indian carefully. He liked the Spanish word. "I can show you one."

"I'm not sure I want to see one--but--yes--of course I do," and Anthony followed his guide.

On a little rise of muddy ground was a jumble of driftwood and grass. The Indian mounted it with Anthony at his heels. He peered over a log and, bobbing his head with assurance, pointed his finger and made way for his companion to see. Anthony stuck _his_ head forward and almost into the open maw of the most horrid creature on earth--two immense jaws wide open--double rows of long white fangs--

He forgot that he was now grown up. He gave the shriek after shriek of a scared little boy and, flouncing backward, went tumbling down the knoll in a madness of haste.

The conference was stopped. All crowded round him in consternation. He was too shaken to be ashamed of himself. "What's the matter?" was the demand.

"El-lagarto," explained the Indian, charmed with this second sensation he had produced.

"Did you kill it, Tony?" asked the Sieur La Salle.

"No," confessed Anthony. "The instant I looked at it, it opened the biggest mouth ever seen and almost bit my head off."

"I will shoot it," and Tonty picked up his firearms; "we don't want one so near the camp."

"It has already been dead for a very long time," began the Indian; "I myself tied its mouth open with a thong--"

As this fact brought the laughter of his peers, Anthony flew into a rage and plunged at the Indian with both fists clenched. Nothing would have pleased the rank and file of soldiers nor the savage boatmen better than a fight in the ring they formed. But the officers pulled Anthony off the prostrate, bewildered Indian, who could not understand the pain of du Gay's wounded vanity.

The poor savage seriously explained to all the interested circle: "When the dead el-lagartoes are quite--quite--_ripe_--it is the custom of my people to pluck out the elegant teeth and to make ourselves necklaces. Why should the white man be so noisy about that?"

Why indeed?

Anthony had so exhausted his emotions that he was very quiet and only half appreciative as he held his place in the group who were ready for the ceremony of taking possession of a kingdom.

To represent the Church, the Father Membre set up a cross and buried near it a lead plate bearing the arms of France. For the Empire the Sieur La Salle erected a column with the emblem of France in full view. These words were carved in the wood: "Louis Le Grand, Roy de France et de Narvarre, regne, la Neuvieme Avril 1682."

The Indians, in the brightest of feathers and the dullest of faces, formed a background for the Father Membre, who chanted the Te Deum. Anthony led the hymns. Then the Sieur La Salle in legal speech took possession of all the lands drained by the Mississippi and its tributaries from the Alleghanies in the east to the unknown mountains in the west, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf. The Frenchmen lined up in military formation and fired a salute to the king's new dominion. It was named Louisiana, for his Majesty.

Think how bold a spirit a man must have had to make such a claim; think what a magnificent present from a subject to his ruler; think of the changes which have happened in that vast domain!

* * * * *

For eighty years the rustic standard held Louisiana. During those days whenever a wandering missionary would meet a soldier of fortune in a native village they would join with some _coureur de bois_ to start a trading post. Many dotted the valley. To civilize his new country his Majesty sent over ship-loads of "king's maids," whom the priests married to the soldiers and _coureurs de bois_. Houses took the places of tepees, the tiny villages grew to towns, French habits of living and gentle ideals of courtesy colored midwestern life with a romance which has never faded.

Then the mother country, politically harassed, ceded Louisiana west of the Mississippi to Spain. In another three years the Highland Black Watch captured Fort Chartres and all Louisiana east of the Great River went to England. Old World emigrants, Scotch and Irish and what not, began pouring toward these lands to make themselves on the virgin soil into something that was not Spanish nor French nor English, but a new race called American. At the time of the Revolution they took Louisiana away from England by force of arms. The part owned by Spain had been ceded back to France, and that the Americans bought of Napoleon in 1803.

All the world, even kings, love a hero, and the Sieur La Salle, standing at the mouth of the Mississippi in 1682, felt sure that in time Louis XIV would reward him for adding this valley to the Empire, as indeed he did, not with honors and titles, for which the explorer cared nothing, but with more men and ships to develop the resources of the Great River.

But even in the midst of the glory of claiming such a kingdom, the little group of adventurers complained of the heat and the miasma. Anthony growled softly: "I do wish that explorers might go north in summer and south in winter like the birds and buffalo. Last winter we were frost-bitten in the ice. Now we are sweltering at the outlet in the time of year when the sources of the river are pleasant."

"This hot, swampy land is breeding fever among us. We cannot find fruits to allay it nor any wholesome meat to counteract it as we did further up the stream," said Tonty. "We must pay for our discoveries in physical discomfort."

"In a word," declared the Sieur La Salle, "we are, as you all know, on the verge of starvation. I have resolved of necessity to eat the only game this region affords. Anthony, is your pistol ready?" and he motioned to the Indian who longed for a necklace. "Then follow this man."

Poor Anthony, rebellion in his long-drawn face and repugnance in every line of his figure, moved behind his guide along a half-submerged path. Soon they came to a pile of rotted tree-trunks. Among them the Indian pointed out the quarry, which would have been quite invisible to unaccustomed eyes.

Swallowing a shudder and adjusting his pistol, Anthony determined to blot out his former cowardice. So intent was he that he forgot the command about innocent-looking logs. He stepped upon one to get a better aim at the reptile. His foot-rest slipped, a flail hit him with so much force that he might have been driven straight into the opening jaws of the living log had not the wary Indian grabbed his jerkin even as he touched the snare and yanked him away at right angles, one hand clutching the air, the other tight on the pistol.

The sweep of the beast's tail was quicker than the eye could follow, but its body was so clumsily built that it needed several seconds to turn. In that flash of time Anthony's pride rose above fear and horror, and as the brute, after missing its kill, was sinking itself into the ooze he aimed at one of the wicked little eyes and banged away.

The first seen reptile had vanished as completely as though it had never existed. Anthony's shot was fatal to the second one.

The Indian guide's whoop of triumph brought others to help haul out the game and prepare it for roasting. The ravenous crowd shouted for glee. This stuff could be chewed and swallowed, and therefore it was food.

Then Anthony, having found himself, went back to his superior officer whistling with restored self-confidence. He knew that many more such distasteful meals would have to be provided ere they worked their way up from the swamp lands and out of starvation into the productive regions and into touch with the world.

"Sieur La Salle," he said, "if in the pursuit of your duty to France you have come to such a pass that you must eat diabolical game, I can shoot it. Behold in me, at your service, chief high executioner to his Satanic Majesty the El-lagarto!"

VI

ON THE ROCK

Holding the Only Fortress of the Valley against the Iroquois for Henry
Tonty--An Owl Saves a Nation

ANTHONY frowned at the capable back of Henry Tonty as it mounted the steep trail in front of him. He wished that he dared to sigh aloud to call this energetic man's attention to the fact that helpers sometimes wearied and that this was one of the times.

For Anthony hated work. Common useful labor tired him. "Let the Indians do it," he thought. The Indians passed the idea on, "Let the squaws do it."

But the squaws were already over-busy curing furs and getting ready to put in the spring crops. So Tonty had decreed that Frenchmen and Indians alike should lend a hand at strengthening the fort on top of the Rock of the Illinois. It had been hastily built in the autumn and now needed the finishing touches.

Every Frenchman wanted to be a military officer or a wandering _coureur de bois_. Each Indian preferred the life of a hunter or a warrior. Yet here they were all working busily under a commander who said that they must dig ditches or fell trees for the mammoth stockade.