A little more than seven months before the Iroquois drove the Illinois tribes out of their river valley, a band of Tamaroas were paddling in wooden dugouts upon the Illinois River not far from the place where later occurred the massacre of so many of their tribes. It was early in March, and throughout the land parties of Indians of every tribe were still roaming about on their winter hunt. That they should meet other wanderers along the streams and trails was therefore not surprising. This day they chanced upon a single canoe coming down the river. It was not one of the wooden pirogues so common among their tribes, but a small canoe of birch bark, and in it were three white men. Two of them were bearded and brown with wind and weather; while the third was smooth of face and large of frame, and was clothed in a long gray robe.

The Tamaroas had seen few white men, but like most of the tribes of the Upper Mississippi Valley they had heard of the French fort near the village of their brother tribe, the Peorias; and they had a keen desire to have the whites settle near their own town and bring them presents of iron weapons and bright-colored pieces of cloth. So now they stopped the canoe and begged the three men to come home with them and pay a visit to the village of their tribe on the western shore of the Mississippi a little way below the mouth of the Illinois.

One of the bearded voyagers, Michael Ako, answered with an excuse, the big gray friar nodding pompous approval as the canoe slipped on downstream. Although the time of their parley was brief, the Indians had observed that the canoe of the whites was loaded not only with provisions, but with furs and merchandise, and, most important of all, with guns and powder and ball. They were going, not down the Mississippi to the village of the Tamaroas and their southern neighbors, but up the Great River to the land of the Sioux, their enemies.

Quickly the Tamaroas resolved that the Sioux warriors should never lay hands on the white men’s guns. Already, armed only with arrows and clubs, they were a foe to be held in no light esteem. As countless as the trees in the woods and swift enough in their bark canoes to far outstrip the clumsy Illinois pirogues, what could the Northern braves not do with guns? There was still a chance to prevent such a catastrophe.

The Tamaroas could not overtake on the water the swift-paddling white men. They tried it and the men in the canoe only laughed at them. But there was a place downstream quickly reached on foot and well fitted for an ambuscade. The fleet young Tamaroas braves darted across country and were soon lying in wait on a narrow point jutting out into the river. Unfortunately, however, for the plans of the Tamaroas, they were not careful enough with their camp-fire, and the white men, seeing the smoke, stole quietly by near the opposite shore. And so the little bark canoe continued its way to the mouth of the Illinois River; and before the end of the month its occupants, the friar Hennepin and his two companions, were well on their way up the Mississippi.

While they were pushing their bark with difficulty against the current of this strange new stream, there was great excitement in the Sioux villages toward which they were journeying. Parties of Indians had gathered in the war dance, and painted savages, stripped and ready for battle, were leaving the towns of the Sioux for the south. They soon reached the waters of the great river not far from the Falls of St. Anthony, and from this point thirty-three bark canoes, manned by more than a hundred men, swept swiftly downstream. The Sioux were embarked upon a war against the Miamis and the Illinois; and bitter with the desire for revenge was their leader, the old chief Aquipaguetin, for it was not long since that the Miamis had killed one of his sons.

They had not t............