For several days the canoes of La Salle’s party passed wet banks and thick canebrakes. No longer were to be seen the otter and the flattailed beaver, for they had been driven out or devoured by the alligators that now infested the river. As the canoes slid past these huge monsters, sometimes nearly twenty feet in length, the Frenchmen sat snugly in the center of their barks for fear of following the way of the beaver.
At length the Arkansas guides indicated a small cove into which a little brook flowed. It was the beginning of the inland trail to the Taensas; and so the whole party landed and pitched camp on the shore of the bay. La Salle asked Tonty to take with him the two guides, a Frenchman, and one of the New England Indians and proceed up the brook toward the villages.
The men paddled their canoe as far as the water would permit, then packed it upon their shoulders, and under the guidance of the Arkansas Indians picked their way across the swampy country. Finally they reached a lake lying in the form of a crescent, and crossing it in their canoe they came upon an Indian town. The men in the canoe drew in their paddles and stepped out on the shore of the lake. Tonty looked in amazement at the Indian village before him, for in all of his wanderings over the continent he had never seen houses like these. Instead of lodges made of bark or mats or skins fastened to a framework of poles, here were great houses built with thick walls of sun-dried mud and dome-shaped roofs of canes.
To the Arkansas guides, however, the village presented no strange scene. They were in familiar country; and when they reached the shore they began a weird Indian song. Back in the village the Taensas who heard them knew they were friends, and came out to welcome them. They led the visitors first to the lodge of the chief, which was a building forty feet in length with walls two feet thick and ten or twelve feet high, surmounted by a domed roof that reached to a height of about fifteen feet.
They passed through the doorway and stood in the semi-darkness of a large room. In the center of the room a torch, made of dried canes, was burning. Its light gleamed upon shields of burnished copper that hung on every wall and lit up dimly hides painted with all manner of pictures. In the flickering light of the torch white-robed figures stood out from the dusk of the room. They were old men of the tribe, sixty of them, and they stood facing an alcove where, on a couch, with his three wives beside him, sat the chief. He was dressed like the old men, in a white robe made from the bark of the mulberry tree; and pearls as big as peas hung from his ears.
There were girls and women in the room, and here and there a child with its mother; but over all the group was a respectful quiet, a dignified reverence for the chief who sat upon the couch gazing curiously at Tonty and his companions. The old men, standing with their hands upon their heads, burst out in unison with a cry, “Ho-ho-ho-ho,” and then seated themselves upon mats laid on the floor. The visitors also were given mats to sit upon.
One of the Arkansas guides rose and began to address the chief. He told him that the white men had come to make an alliance with him, but just now they were sorely in need of food. Then he swung from his own body a buffalo skin and presented it to the chief. Tonty, too, delighted him with the gift of a knife—for the knives and hatchets of the Taensas were rude instruments made of flint.
The chief ordered food to be sent to the men who were waiting over on the Mississippi and a banquet to be prepared for their guests. It was a dignified feast, at which slaves waited upon the chief. They brought him dishes and cups, made of pottery with the fine art in which his people excelled. No one else used his dishes or drank out of his cup.
A little tottering child started to cross the floor between the chief and the flaming torch. With a quick reproof his mother seized him and made him walk around the torch. Such was the respect which they paid to the living chief; and when a chief died it was their custom to sacrifice perhaps a score of men and women, that they might accompany him to the country beyond the grave and serve him there.
When the feast was over and the visitors came out from the lodge of the chief, they saw across the way a building somewhat similar in shape and size. It was the sacred temple of the tribe. Into the mud walls that inclosed it were stuck spikes on which were hung the skulls of enemies. On the roof, facing the rising sun which the Taensas worshiped, were the carved figures of three eagles. Inside the temple were preserved the bones of departed chiefs. An altar stood in the middle of the room, and here the sacred fire was kept burning. Two old medicine men sat beside it, unwinking and grave, guarding it by day and by night.
The chief was highly pleased with his visitors. If the man who had sent Tonty to his village had been an Indian, it would have been beneath the chief’s dignity to call upon him. But he sent word to La Salle by Tonty that he would pay him a visit, and on the next day he set out. He sent before him a master of ceremonies with six men to prepare the way. They took with them a beautifully woven mat for him to rest upon, and with their hands they swept the ground over which he would pass. As he came down the little creek in his dugout canoe his followers beat upon drums and his wives and the other women in the party sang songs of praise. He landed and approached La Salle’s camp, dressed in his white robe and preceded by two men carrying white plume fans and a third bearing two shields of shining brass. The two chiefs met and exchanged presents; and after a quiet call the dignified Taensas chief returned to his village on the lake.
When La Salle’s men pushed their canoes out from the shore of the cove, well laden with provisions from the Taensas, they left behind their Arkansas guides and four of the New England Indians who were fearful of the dangers below. But there were now two new members of the party, for the Taensas had given to Tonty and his Mohegan companion two slave boys, captured from the Coroas farther south.
They had not gone far when they observed upon the river a single canoe, to which a number of the party gave chase. The canoe of Tonty, outstripping the others, had nearly reached the strange bark when they saw a band of perhaps a hundred Indians, armed with bows and arrows, on the shore ready to defend their comrade in the canoe. Tonty, after consulting with La Salle, offered to take a pipe of peace to the band of savages. He crossed to the shore, presented the calumet for the Indians............