“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.

Five years had passed over the lodges of the Peorias and Kaskaskias since that memorable summer; but fear still hung about the villages of the upper basin of the Great Valley. Three years of winter and summer hunts, of ripening corn and snow-locked landscape, had come and gone in the valley of the Illinois since the black-robed Marquette, gentle-faced and sick unto death, had bade farewell to the young Kaskaskia Indians and journeyed off with his two men along the shore of the Lake of the Illinois, never again to be seen alive save by his two faithful companions.

Through all these years the Indian women whispered their fears among themselves in the lodges; and the men, as they chipped their stone arrowheads or shaped their strong bows, prayed to their manitous that if the Iroquois should come, the stone tips might fly straight and sure, lest their lodges be burned and the naked, howling men of the East carry torture and death among their women and children.

The Iroquois did come. It was in the year 1678 that war parties of these fierce tribes descended upon the valley of the Illinois. Out on the wooded plains the allied tribes advanced to meet them; while the women and children and the old men of the villages waited in dread and fear till runners came breathless to tell them of the repulse of the hated foe. This time the villages were saved, but fear did not die out with the victory. The valley lay like an ancient stronghold whose defenders had fought the besiegers away from the walls, yet slept on their arms in constant dread of a still more deadly attack.

In this same year of 1678, Allouez, another black-robed priest, came to settle among the Indians of the Kaskaskia village. He had come out to them for a few weeks in the spring of the year before, when eight of the tribes of the Illinois Nation were gathered at the village of the Kaskaskias that they might be in constant readiness to repel invasions of the Iroquois. Now the priest had come to stay, to baptize their children, and to teach them more about the strange manitou of whom Marquette had first told them. A huge cross, twenty-five feet high, had been erected in the middle of the town, and the Indians listened respectfully while he chanted the mass and preached to them.

The winter with its long hunting season went by; the river froze over and thawed out again; the time of planting came once more; and the children again played in the sun through the long hours of summer. So events moved on toward the strange happenings of the winter that followed. In the Kaskaskia village the women and girls had gathered the harvest of Indian corn and had stowed it away in caches or pits dug in the ground, lined with rushes and twigs and covered over for the long winter. It was a precious store, for it must provide corn for the spring sowing and food until the next harvest came around again. Then as the leaves dropped one by one from the trees along the river and the colder winds came, the whole village went off for the winter hunt.

It was the night before Christmas in 1679, and Allouez, the black-robed priest, still lingered in the Kaskaskia village, thinking, more than likely, of Christmas Eve in his beloved France far across the ocean, where amid the lights of a hundred candles priests were conducting midnight mass. Or perchance he thought of the high rock of Quebec where a frontier settlement held frowning watch above the river. Even it was hundreds of leagues nearer civilization than he.

But hark! There was a sound that brought the priest out of his reveries and back to the forest and rocks along the snow-skirted river of the wilderness. Out of the darkness came a group of Indians—young braves from some wandering bands of Miamis and Mascoutins. Well did Allouez know these tribes, for he had lived with them years before in their village near the portage of the Fox River. Strange and exciting was the news which they brought him this night. Alarm deepened on the priest’s face as he gathered his few belongings and made his way across the snow and through the woods to the village of the Miamis and Mascoutins.

The village of the Kaskaskias, on the north shore of the Illinois, now lay silent and deserted. The lonely lodges and the well-filled caches alone gave evidence that the Indians would return. Many leagues down the river was the village of the Peorias. Here, too, the young men were off on the winter hunt; but the older men and the women and children were still at the village. With them was Nicanopé, brother of Chassagoac, and many others of the Kaskaskia tribe.

Not a hint of the message that brought such alarm to Allouez at the upper village had come to the Peorias. Aside from the ever-present dread of the Iroquois, that lurked in each Indian’s mind, they lived as peacefully as the hardships of winter would permit. Smoke from their lodges rose up into the wintry sky, or veered off to the south and east when the blasts of wind swept across the plains. The river was open, and by the bank on either side lay pirogues—heavy canoes fifty feet long and big enough to hold more than a score of men.

Less than two weeks had passed since Allouez had fled from the upper village. The sun had been up an hour or more, and the Peoria village was bustling with life. Warriors and old men stalked here and there in their winter garments of buffalo hide, or sat smoking and gazing placidly upon river and sky. The ever busy women sat weaving rush mats or bestirred themselves in gathering wood. Children played about in the open, and on the sunny side of the lodges zealous mothers had already set up on end the brown papooses bound like little mummies in the cradles.

Then, stirring the village as an arrow startles a covey of birds, came the wild cry, “The Iroquois.” From behind a jutting point up the river swept a long line of canoes. Indescribable confusion followed. On both sides of the river men sprang for their bows and arrows; while women, hardly pausing to seize their babes, scuttled away between the lodges and on to the friendly woods back on the hill. With them went the young girls and children, fleeing like scared rabbits.

Meantime the current of the river bore the canoes down to the village. They turned to the left, and a tall figure leaped from the nearest canoe to the bank and then stood quietly watching the confusion of the villagers. Some of the warriors fled to the woods with the women. Others with eager weapons were about to attack the newcomers, when a cry from one of their chiefs on the other shore made them pause. He had seen that, although the men from the canoes, armed with guns and ready for war, could have shot down a dozen Illinois in their first confused scramble for weapons, they had not fired a single shot. These men were evidently not Iroquois, but Frenchmen who seemed bent on peace rather than battle.

Quickly the calumet was raised by the reassured Peorias, and another was offered by the French. The canoes were drawn up to the bank, and together the white men and the villagers went to the lodges. Old men reappeared from the woods and women came out of their hiding-places. Children with wary eyes looked up into the faces of three friars, Fathers of the Recollet Order with gray robes and pointed cowls, who took them by the hand and poured out friendly but unintelligible words.

In the lodges the warriors and chiefs—now that the fear of an Iroquois attack had subsided—welcomed the visitors with every sign of good will. They rubbed their feet with bear’s oil and the fat of buffalo and fed them with the best the village had to offer. Then they sat down for a council of peace, ready to hear the message of the white men. Chassagoac was away on the hunt, and so his brother Nicanopé was the highest in rank of the Indian chiefs who were present.

There were bold men among the French in this council; and the Indians gazed with kindling eyes upon the tall figure of the white chief who had first leaped from his canoe, and upon the dark face of another man who seemed to be next in command. This second man had sat in the canoe at the farther end of the line that had swept down to the village. He was among the last to come ashore; but something unusual and strangely awkward about his movements caught the quick attention of the Indians. In the council, however, their eyes turned from the swarthy, black-haired lieutenant to the tall white leader as he rose to speak.

Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, was a man still under middle age, but an indomitable will and a restless and unceasing activity had already crowded his years with the experiences of an ordinary lifetime. No Indian could look upon his cold, finely chiseled features and unflinching eyes without feeling the relentless force of the man. They listened with quiet attention to his words.

He offered them a present of Martinique tobacco and some hatchets, saying that first of all he wished to tell them of a thing he had done and explain it to them. A few days before he and his men had come to the village of their brother tribe, the Kaskaskias, many leagues up the river. The village was empty where they had hoped to find friendly Indians with food. Unable to kill game, they were in danger of starvation. They well knew how precious was the corn hidden in the caches of the deserted town, but in their extremity they had borrowed some; and now they wished to pay for it in presents or to return it to the Peorias if the Indians could not spare it. At the same time he added that if they could not let him have food for his men, he would go down the river to their neighbors, the Osages, and there set up the forge which he had brought to mend their knives and hatchets and make them new tools for the warpath and the chase.

Behind the impassive faces of Nicanopé, Omawha, and other chiefs were minds alive to a new situation. This man was not a mere black robe, come among them to preach and to baptize their dying; nor was he a lone trader, a coureur de bois passing by in his bold profession of trapping, hunting, and trading furs. Here was a great chief with men at his back, a warrior with fire-spitting guns, a trader with canoes full of hatchets and knives and tobacco and a forge to keep their weapons in order and to make them new ones. Surely he was a great and powerful man who had come into their country this cold winter day, and well would it be for the tribes of the Illinois if he stayed among them.

But what is this he is saying? He speaks of the Iroquois. They, too, are subjects of the King of the French. Yet if the bold Iroquois should fall upon them, La Salle and his followers would be with the Illinois, would give them guns, and would help them protect their villages from the onslaughts of the Five Nations. Only they must let him build a fort near their village for the protection of his men. He wished, also, to build a great canoe, big enough to hold all his men and goods, and by means of it to travel down the Illinois to the Mississippi and thence on its broad current to where it emptied into the Gulf of Mexico—so that he might bring back more hatchets and presents.

The Indians were overjoyed. Many of the Kaskaskias were present, and among them was Nicanopé, one of their chiefs. They told La Salle to keep the corn he had taken at the upper village, and begged him to stay among them and set up his forge and build his fort. If he wished to descend the river that flowed through the length of the Great Valley, he would find it an easy waterway and the country through which it flowed a land of beauty and plenty.

Finally the conference broke up and the Indians retired to their own lodges in great happiness of mind. Among them none was happier than Chief Omawha, for La Salle had shown him special favor and had given him two hatchets and a number of knives.