It was many days later, and the quiet and beauty of June had come upon the Mississippi Valley. From in front of the Peoria lodges on the banks of the Iowa River, a slender trail slipped off across the prairies through two leagues of sunshine over a country fair to see, and came at length to the west bank of the Mississippi. But on this summer day no Indian traveled the pathway that led from the village. There was no one in the streets of the Indian town, and no movement to be seen save the slow rising of smoke from the tops of the three hundred lodges which dotted the hill like so many long arbors, with rounded roofs made waterproof by layers of plaited rush mats. But from the lodges came the murmur of voices, for inside the windowless walls the Indians of the Peoria tribe were gathered.
Down the center line within each lodge four or five fires were burning, and beside each fire two families made their home. Indian women squatted by the smouldering embers, or pounded corn into meal in stone bowls; while here and there on rush mats or on the dirt floor sat the men with tattooed and sinewy bodies, smoking long-stemmed pipes or mending bows. Against the walls brown papooses, on end in their cases, blinked at the light from doorway and fires or gazed stolidly and silently at nothing. Life among the lodges, except in time of war, was uneventful. Nor was there on this day in late June any reason to look for events other than those which had fallen upon the tribe for generations.
Then of a sudden the village was startled by a shout. It was not that peculiar cry of war which sometimes echoed along the valley, nor yet the cry of returning hunters or warriors. It had an odd new note in it that halted the busy work of the Indian women and woke to activity the dreaming braves. Pipes were laid aside, stones with which the squaws were grinding corn fell quiet into the bowls, and papooses were forgotten as the villagers swarmed out of the lodges into the sunlight.
Strange was the sight which met their curious gaze. There in the pathway that came over from the Mississippi were two men. The Peorias had seen no Indians like these. Although it was the month of June the strangers were covered from head to foot with garments of cloth. One, a man yet in his twenties, was dressed in a coat and heavy breeches; the other, a quietfaced man somewhat older than his companion, wore a long black robe, gathered about his waist by a cord and reaching to his feet. Swung from this cord was a string of large beads from which hung a cross.
Unannounced these strange beings had appeared in the pathway before the village almost as if dropped by some spirit from the sky. No paint was on their pale faces, no feathers in their hair. They carried no weapons and displayed neither the pipe of war with its red paint and feathers nor the pipe of peace that told of the coming of friends. Yet there were those among the Indian villagers who doubtless knew whence the strangers came. Perhaps among them were some of the Illinois warriors who, six years before, had made a visit to a group of cabins many leagues to the north, on the shore of Lake Superior, and who had there seen the energetic fur traders, with their blanket coats and stout breeches, and the Jesuit priests who, dressed like this man in black gown and hood, had pushed their way into the villages all about the Great Lakes. Perhaps in the journeys which the Peorias sometimes made to the village of their Kaskaskia brothers over on the Illinois River, they had heard of the men with white faces who lived near Green Bay and at the Straits of Mackinac.
The word quickly passed among the men of the Peoria village that these two strangers were of the great French nation from over the sea. Moreover, since it was customary for the Indian to be hospitable to peaceable visitors, these two men who had appeared so unexpectedly in the pathway must be fitly welcomed. Four Indians—old men with authority in the tribe—stepped out from the crowd and advanced down the path. They walked slowly, two of them holding above their heads in the glowing sunlight the calumets or pipes of peace decorated with feathers and finely ornamented. Without a word they drew near the strangers, holding their pipes to the sky as if offering them to the sun to smoke. Finally they stopped and gazed attentively, yet courteously, upon the white men.
Then spoke up the man in the black gown. “Who are you?” he said in a broken Algonquian tongue.
“We are Illinois,” the old men answered. There was pride in their tones, for the name Illinois means “the men”—as if no other Indians were so worthy to be called men. Then they gave the white men the pipes of peace to smoke and invited them to visit the lodges.
Together the Indians and their guests walked up the path to the village. At the door of one of the lodges was an old man who stood naked and erect, with hands extended to the sun. Toward this lodge the strangers made their way; and as they drew near, the old man spoke:
“How beautiful is the sun, O Frenchmen, when thou comest to visit us! All our village awaits thee and thou shalt enter all our lodges in peace.”
Within the lodge were many of the tribe, and in their minds was great wonder as they looked upon the curious men from the East. The elders of the tribe again gave to the visitors the pipe of peace; and when they had smoked, the Indians also drew upon the calumet, thus binding upon themselves peace and good will to their strange guests.
A little way off was a group of lodges where lived the greatest chief of the tribe. When he heard of the coming of the white men, he sent to invite them to his lodge. The strangers accepted, and a great retinue attended them as they passed through the village. Eager to see such unusual visitors, the Indians followed them in throngs. Some lay in the grass and watched them as they passed by; others ran ahead, and then walked back to meet them. Yet without noise and with great courtesy they looked upon the two white men. Finally they all came to the lodge of the Peoria chief.
The chief stood in his doorway, while on either side of him stood an old man. Naked were the three, and up toward the sun they held the long-stemmed calumet. With a few dignified words the chief drew the white men into his lodge, where again they smoked together in friendship. Then silence fell upon those within the lodge, for the time had come when the strangers should tell of their mission. Impassive but full of expectancy, the Indians waited. It was the man in the black gown who spoke; and after the manner of the Indians he gave them four presents and with each present he gave them a message.
Silently the red men listened as with his first present he told them of the object of his coming. He was Jacques Marquette, a priest of the Order of Jesuits, and his companion was Louis Joliet, a fur trader and explorer of the great French nation. They had come journeying peaceably to visit the tribes that dwelt upon the Mississippi, and they were eager to go as far as the sea into which the Great River flowed.
Again he gave them a present and told them of the God of the white men, who had created the Indian as well, and who had sent the black-robed priests into the far corners of the earth to tell the Indians of his glory. Then a third present he gave to the Peorias and told them of the great chief of the French who sent word that he had conquered the fierce Iroquois and made peace everywhere. With the fourth and last present he begged the Peorias to tell him of the Indian nations to the south along the windings of the great river and beside the sea into which it flowed.
When the priest ceased speaking, the chief of the Peorias rose. Beside him stood an Indian boy of about ten years. He was not a Peoria, but the captive who had been taken in battle and adopted into the chief’s family. Placing his hand on the boy’s head, the chief spoke these words:—
“I thank thee, Black Gown, and thee, O Frenchman, for having taken so much trouble to come to visit us. Never has the earth been so beautiful or the sun so bright as to-day. Never has our river been so calm or so free from rocks, which thy canoes have removed in passing. Never has our tobacco tasted so good or our corn appeared so fine as we now see it. Here is my son whom I give thee to show thee my heart.”
Thus the captive Indian lad came to be one of the party of explorers and to share their strange wanderings and adventures in the Great Valley.
As the priest spoke of the God of the French who had sent his men across seas and into forests, the Indian chief, and those who sat with him, thought of their own manitous and gods, and of their own medicine men who understood and knew the powerful spirits, and by prayers and incantations could influence them to bring sunshine to ripen the corn and rain in time of drought, to guard them in warfare, and to cure them in sickness. This black-robed priest must be a great medicine man in the lodges of the whites; and so the chief said:—
“I beg thee to have pity on me and on my nation. It is thou who knowest the Spirit who made us all. It is thou who speakest to Him and hearest his word. Beg Him to give me life and health and to come and dwell with us that we may know Him.”
Then the chief gave the priest a pipe like that which the two old men had carried. It was carved, and decked with the plumage of birds, and its stem was as long as a tall brave’s arm. It was a token of peace which the white men would often need in the countries they were about to explore. With this present the Peoria spoke of the love he bore for the great chief of the French.
With another present he warned the white men of the dangers ahead of them; and he begged them not to go farther. Tribes fierce and deadly lived toward the south, and other dangers more mysterious and awful lurked along the waters of the river. But the gentle-faced priest replied that he had no fear of death, saying that he counted no happiness greater than to die teaching of his God.
Amazed were all the Indians who sat in the chiefs lodge and heard this answer. To scalp a foe in honor of one’s manitou and to the glory of his nation seemed the height of joy and triumph; but they could not understand the courage of one who would willingly be scalped or tortured in honor of his God. So they made no reply and the council closed.
Meanwhile among the lodges Indian women and girls had busied themselves in preparing a feast for the strangers. Papooses were hung up out of the way on trees or leaned against the lodge walls while their mothers brought corn and meat, stirred the fires, and killed a dog for the distinguished guests. A woman whose nose had been cut off as a punishment for unfaithfulness to her husband came out of a near-by lodge. Young girls, whose daily duty it was to care for the rows of corn and beans in the fields, now helped to bring into the lodge the food which the women had made ready.
The first course at this Peoria feast was sagamite, a dish made from the meal of Indian corn and seasoned with fat. It was served on a great wooden platter. An Indian, acting as master of ceremonies, took a spoon made from the bone of a buffalo, filled it with sagamite, and presented it several times to the mouths of the strangers as one would feed children. Then they brought, fresh from the fires which the Indian women had tended, a dish containing three fish. The same Indian took the fish, removed the bones, blew upon some pieces to cool them, and fed them to the guests. The third course, which was served only upon rare and highly important occasions, consisted of the meat of a dog freshly killed. To the great surprise of the Indians the white men did not eat of this dish, and so it was taken away. The fourth course was buffalo meat, the choicest morsels of which were given to the priest and his companion.
After this elaborate feast, the Peorias took their visitors through the whole village, and the open-mouthed and open-hearted Indians brought them gifts of their own make—belts and bracelets made from the hair of buffalo or bear and dyed red, yellow, and gray. At length when night came upon the Peoria lodges, Marquette and Joliet were made comfortable on beds of buffalo robes in the lodge of the chief.
In the afternoon of the next day the strangers departed from the Indian lodges on the Iowa River and followed the pathway back to the bank of the Mississippi; and with them, courteous to the last, went the chief and full six hundred members of the tribe. When they came out upon the river bank, the Indians gazed in wonder at the five white men who had been left by their leaders to guard two small canoes—small, indeed, in comparison with the great boats of the Peorias which, hollowed out of three-foot logs, were half a hundred feet long.
The sun was about halfway down the sky when the strangers embarked. The Peorias, gathered on the bank, looked on curiously as the two white men and the Indian boy joined their companions in the birch-bark canoes, pushed out from the shore, swung into the current, and paddled off downstream. Then they faced the dropping sun and walked back to the village. As they thought of the savage tribes to the south and the awful dangers of the river, they doubted greatly if the gallant strangers would again come to their village and pay them the visit which the black-robed priest had promised.
They did see these same voyagers again, but not in the village by the side of the Iowa River; for during that very summer the Peoria tribe moved. One day the Indian women stripped the lodge-poles, packed up the camp implements, loaded themselves with supplies of food and robes, and together with the men of the village started on a journey eastward which led them far beyond the Mississippi. On the banks of the Illinois River, not far from the lake that still bears their name, the Peoria women set up new lodges and kindled the fires that were to burn day and night in the new home. Farther up the same river another tribe of the Illinois Nation—the Kaskaskias—were living in a village on the north bank.
Between these two Illinois towns the young braves no doubt often passed during the summer of 1673; and as they sat by the fires of their Kaskaskia brothers and smoked the long calumets, the Peorias told of the coming of the whites to the village beyond the Mississippi and of their departure with the Indian boy to journey down the length of the mysterious river to the great salt sea of the south.