Père Marquette/Chapter 11

The Indians who lived in the two villages, one close to the river and one perched on an adjoining hill, were Illinois, that friendly and intelligent tribe who, from the first, had aroused Père Marquette's interest and won his affection, whom he had promised to visit and hoped to convert. Ignorant of this happy circumstance, he and Joliet made their cautious way along the path until they sighted the settlement, and could hear the noisy hubbub common to all savage communities. They then thought it well to announce their presence, which they did by shouting with all their might. The startled Indians poured out of the lodges and stared in amazement at the strangers, who stood quite still, smiling as though unafraid and sure of a welcome.

There was a long pause, a hushed silence, a ​careful scrutiny. Then, relieved in their turn of apprehension, the kindly disposed savages bethought themselves of the proper ceremonies with which visitors should be received; and, to gain time, they sent four old men, who walked very slowly toward the intruders. Two of them carried handsomely decorated tobacco pipes, the calumets which stood for friendship and good-will. They waved these pipes solemnly in the air, and made a dumb show of smoking them as they advanced at a snail's pace and in silence. When they were quite near, Père Marquette asked to what tribe they belonged, and heard the answer with joy. The four deputies then gravely invited the Frenchmen to enter the village, and preceded them with formal and courteous gestures. At the entrance of the first lodge stood a warrior, naked and upright, his arms extended, his hands spread, as though to shield himself from the piercing rays of the sun. He was highly dramatic, and he was also highly complimentary, for he said that the great brilliancy of the skies was due to the white men's coming. "How beautiful is the sun when you visit our abode, O strangers from beyond the sea! The village ​awaits you, and beneath our roofs you shall rest in safety and in peace."

The gratified travelers then entered the lodge, which was crowded with braves and squaws who stared at them intently and in silence. Only now and then was heard the low polite murmur: "How good it is our brothers that you should come to us!" Pipes were brought and smoked, the Frenchmen leading, and all the braves taking their turn. This consumed an hour, after which an invitation arrived from the second village on the hill. The chief who dwelt there desired the presence of the newcomers, and would hold a council with them.

Up the hill they went, Père Marquette and Joliet, accompanied by a concourse of savages, few of whom had ever seen a white man before. All were eager to get a good look at these mysterious, pallid, self-possessed beings, who spoke their tongue and maintained a gravity equal to their own. Indians lined the road. Indians led the way, turning and retracing their steps every few moments, to gaze again and again upon the strangers. They made no noise whatever—an emphatic token of respect. The ​dogs were banished. The children who accompanied their mothers watched round-eyed and silent. At the door of the biggest lodge of the village stood the chief himself with two of his councillors, all three erect and naked, all three holding calumets in their outstretched hands. Really, considering that they had been taken by surprise, the Illinois were doing the thing in style.

Once inside this second lodge, which was immediately filled with spectators, Père Marquette decided that the time had come for him to open the council with a speech. Accordingly he produced four gifts (again he omits to tell us what they were), and with each gift he made a formal and appropriate oration—the kind that Indians loved. With the first he told his hearers that he and the Sieur Joliet and five companions were journeying peacefully to visit the nations that dwelt by the great river which he hoped to follow to the sea. With the second he spoke of the God of the Christians, who had made white men and red, who willed that white men and red should know and worship Him, who was all-wise, all-powerful, all-just, and all-merciful, ​and to whose word they must listen attentively. With the third he gave what information he could about Frontenac, the great warrior sent from France, who had enforced peace throughout his demesne, and compelled even the Iroquois to keep away from the warpath. With the fourth he begged his hosts to tell him all they knew of the Mississippi, of the lands that lay between him and the sea, of the distances he must traverse, of the tribes he must encounter.

When he had finished the chief arose, drew forward a little slave whom he intended to present to the strangers, and, resting his hand upon the child's head, expressed his sense of the honor which had been done him. The gravity of his manner and accent contrasted oddly with the extravagance of his words. He began by thanking the Frenchmen for their visit, and for the blessings which had manifestly accompanied it. "Never before," he said, "has the earth been so beautiful or the skies so bright as to-day. Never has our river been so calm, or so clear of rocks, which your canoes have removed in passing." (This was a happy touch.) "Never has our tobacco tasted so sweet, or our corn flour​ished so greenly as now. Here is my son whom I give you as proof of my affection. I beg you to show kindness to me and to my people. You know the Great Spirit who has made us all. Come and dwell with us that we may know Him too, and that He may give us life and vigor."

This preamble being over, a calumet was produced, a particularly sacred calumet made of red sandstone and hung with feathers. It was presented to Père Marquette with the assurance that it would be recognized as a token of friendship, not only by the Illinois, but by any other tribes that might be encountered. Nevertheless, the chief—dropping suddenly into plain speech—counseled his visitors to turn back. Behind them lay home and safety. Before them lay manifold dangers to which they were exposing themselves without cause.

Having proffered this sound advice, and being quite sure it would not be followed, the hospitable savage closed the council with a feast, which was served with much ceremony on the floor of the lodge. The first course was a huge wooden platter of sagamité richly flavored with fat. Spoonfuls of this porridge were carefully fed ​to the guests, as if they had been small children and incapable of helping themselves. A platter of broiled fish followed and was handled in the same fashion. Attentive Indians picked up pieces of the fish, blew on them until they were cool enough to eat, and placed the morsels in the mouths of the patient priest and of Joliet, who grimaced but submitted. A large dog was served next. It was deemed a delicacy, and had been freshly slain for this great occasion; but, seeing that his visitors seemed strangely reluctant to partake of it, the courteous chief ordered it to be removed, and replaced by a dish of buffalo meat. The choicest—that is the fattest—pieces of this meat were put in the white men's mouths; and when they could eat no more the feast was mercifully concluded.

This feeding of guests was a matter of strict etiquette among all the Illinois. They never permitted strangers to raise their hands to their mouths, but considered that they showed them the utmost respect by saving them this labor. They fed La Salle at Peoria with spoonfuls of sagamité and lumps of dried elk's meat, which he received unwillingly from their filthy fingers. ​Perhaps it was only the recollection of the universal dirt which made part and parcel of savage life which enabled him to overcome his squeamishness. After all, in a land where nobody and nothing was washed, and where the cleanest of the bark dishes were those licked dry by the dogs, why should a little extra grime tempt him to a rude rejection of the rites of hospitality?

The preference of the savages for fat and grease was also singularly trying to their white guests. In some tribes a male infant was forced to swallow a pellet of fat as soon as it was born, and before it took the breast. Père Le Jeune admitted that the sight of an Indian biting greedily into a lump of cold hard grease, "as though it had been an apple," turned his stomach. He remembered, however, the words of a French peasant, who said that if he were a king he would live on fat; and he realized the craving of the underfed for this form of nourishment. Indians who survived a winter diet of flavorless corn meal, coarse dried fish, and dried elk's meat, as hard and as unpalatable as wood fibre, naturally welcomed the soft succulence of fat. Indians who starved through a winter on eel​skins and tripe de roche found exquisite pleasure in scraping the cold grease from a platter, and devouring the last unsavory scrap.

"Various are the tastes of men," as Akenside sagely remarked, under the impression that he had discovered this great truth. Père Huc, when hospitably entertained by the Thibetans, felt the utmost reluctance in eating the pieces of quivering white fat—choice morsels from the tails of sheep—which were heaped upon his plate, and which he could not in courtesy refuse. Dr. William H. Furness describes a rude game played by the Head-Hunters of Borneo at which he unwillingly assisted. The young men sat in a ring on the ground, and the girls carried around dishes heaped with lumps of cold, coarse animal fat. The men were compelled to devour as many lumps as the girls thought fit to feed them. The first few went well enough. Then, as lump followed lump, came distaste, repugnance, nausea, to the amusement of the unrelenting tormentors, who took a pitiless delight in the misery they were inflicting. The Borneans are bon-vivants as compared with Seventeenth Century American Indians. They have no winters of cold and ​semi-starvation to fit them for such dreadful pleasantries.

It was to be expected that Père Marquette should have nothing but praise for the Illinois, from whom he received nothing but kindness. He placed them unhesitatingly at the head of all the tribes that he had known. They had, he thought, an air of humanity, of embryonic civilization, which made other Indians seem doubly savage by their side. They were gentle, tractable, receptive, and intelligent. They were liberal in disposition, and reasonable in character. In a word—and he said it with enthusiasm—they were men.

Other reports are less favorable. The Illinois were part of the great Algonquin nation, and, like all Algonquins, were loyal to France, well disposed toward Christianity, and very much afraid of the Iroquois. La Salle, who had dealings with them, found them to be as fickle as they were friendly, as undependable as they were intelligent; useful allies, but "capricious and uncertain." They were good hunters and fair fighters, making long journeys in search of ​slaves, whom they obtained by force or by barter and sold to other tribes. The little boy, mellifluously called "my son" by the chief who presented him to Père Marquette and Joliet, was doubtless the spoil of some such raid.

In the matter of sexual morality the Illinois were rather below than above the average. Their principal contribution toward right living was the inexorable severity with which they cut off the ears or noses of their errant wives. This duty performed, they felt they had done their part in maintaining a high social standard. The squaws were modestly dressed and very industrious, planting good crops of Indian corn, beans, and squashes. The lodges, though filthy, were large and rainproof, with rush mats for chairs and beds. The cooking utensils were made of wood, the spoons and ladles of bone. The proudest possessions of the braves were guns, which they bought with their best pelts, and which they used in the light-hearted fashion of Mr. Winkle, unconcerned about marksmanship, and rightly considering that the smoke and noise would make them sufficiently alarming to their enemies. ​For serious hunting, for the pursuit of deer and buffalo, they depended upon bows and arrows, with which they were exceedingly expert.

The medicine men of the Illinois appear to have been the stupidest of impostors, whose pretensions were so absurd, and whose frauds were so barefaced, that only custom and tradition could have imposed them upon fairly intelligent savages. Nevertheless, they were treated with respect and liberality. "The Indians," observed Père Marquette, "think that the effect of the remedies administered to them is in proportion to the richness of their gifts." It was always well for the savage brave to keep on the right side of these sorcerers, who—if they could effect no cures except in so far as they were able to persuade patients that they were cured—might still do many a good or ill turn, according to their bent.

It is interesting to note that among certain tribes, noticeably the Hurons, the medicine men believed, or professed to believe, in suppressed desires as firmly as if they had been Freudians of to-day. Père Du Perron says that a soothsayer, summoned to heal a sick Huron, would gaze into a tortoise-shell, or perhaps into a fire, for a ​long time, striving by concentration of mind to learn what it was that his patient unconsciously wanted. Having found his clue, he would triumphantly announce that a fire feast, a dance, a string of beads, or a bit of eelskin was the thing imperatively required, and every effort would be made to provide it. An Indian journeyed for miles to beg Père Du Perron for a piece of red cloth which the medicine man demanded for a sick child. The missionary had no red cloth, and the boy died.

Père Jouvencey found traces of this belief among the Algonquins. He was immensely interested in its pseudo-scientific character, and described it with careful accuracy. "They [the Indians] believe that there are two main sources of disease. One of these is in the mind of the patient himself, which unwittingly craves something, and will vex the body of the sick man until he possesses it. For they hold that there are in every man certain inborn desires, often unknown to himself, upon which his happiness depends. For the purpose of ascertaining such innate and ungratified appetites, they summon soothsayers, who, as they think, have a super​naturally imparted power to look into the inmost recesses of the mind."

If this be not modern, where shall we turn for modernity? The only archaic touch about it is the sex of the invalid. For whereas, in the world of to-day, women are the profitable patients of all kinds of healers, spiritual, mental, and professional, it was the Indian warrior, or perhaps the Indian boy, whose suppressed desires awakened so much concern. The squaws were pretty well accustomed to suppressing all desires, conscious or otherwise, and too hard at work to think a great deal about them. If they fell sick, there was always the solacing thought, so naïvely expressed by the old Ottawa chief to Père Marquette, that it made no especial difference whether they lived or died.

Nothing about the Illinois interested the missionary so deeply as the ritual which had been woven around the calumet, the sacred pipe which figured in all treaties and rejoicings, in all preparations for war, and in all covenants to promote peace. Our debt to the Indians for the discovery and use of tobacco, of that ​inestimable solace in a hard—and sedative in a noisy—world, is so great that no heart is wide enough to hold it, and no words are warm enough to give it proper expression. Therefore it is a pleasure to know that to many of these Indians the pipe was an august and holy thing, the emblem of all they held hallowed and dear. Père Marquette, who was later to owe his life to the protection of the calumet, regarded it with unqualified admiration. He devoted pages of his journal to describing the rites and ceremonies in which it played a part.

"There is a calumet for peace," he wrote, "and a calumet for war. They are distinguished by the colors of the feathers with which they are adorned—scarlet standing for war. Both are fashioned from red stone, polished like marble and carefully drilled so that one end serves as a receptacle for the tobacco, while the other fits into a hollow wooden stem, two feet long and as thick as an ordinary walking stick. This stem is hung with the heads of birds of gay plumage, and with bright-hued feathers. Less honor is shown to the crowns and scepters of kings than ​is paid by the savages to this sacred emblem. Carrying one, a warrior may walk in safety though surrounded by his foes."

As a proof of the holiness of the calumet, it was held aloft during the ceremonial dances of the early summer, and offered with all due reverence to the sun, in case that luminary should have a mind to smoke. And until these dances had been performed, and the sun so honored, the Indians scrupled to eat fresh fruits, or to bathe—after eight unwashed months—in the cooling streams. There was a rhythm, a dignity, a savage pride about these dances which made them very impressive to such Frenchmen as had not set their hearts upon a ballet. The surroundings and accessories were singularly picturesque. The green of the mighty forests, the blue of the wind-swept skies, the great open space around which old men, squaws, and children clustered thickly, the presiding manitou in a place of honor with trophies of war heaped high about it—everything that could suggest to the spectator the serious beauty of a rite which was both tribal and religious.

The mock combats with which the dance ​ended were the red men's nearest approach to drama. Warriors armed with bows and arrows attacked other warriors whose sole defence was the calumet, which they embraced ardently when they fled to covert, and waved triumphantly when they turned to pursue the pursuers. All this was done in ordered fashion, and to the accompaniment of drums and rhythmic chanting. It may be observed that Père Marquette was the only missionary who ever had a good word to say for Indian music. He stoutly maintained that it had a charm which could not be reproduced; and that the alternate drone and howl which drove more sensitive listeners to frenzy pleased the ear when heard in the open air. There was, as he doubtless observed, plenty of space between singer and audience, and there were the free winds of heaven to dissipate the sound.

The entertainment invariably ended with an oration, "a lofty discourse" delivered by a warrior who held the calumet, and who recounted the tale of his battles and victories. Sometimes he was succeeded by other warriors who had the same story to tell, and who told it with the same solemn fervor. After all, there are certain points ​of resemblance between these dead-and-gone savages and the civilized men who have succeeded them. Our perpetual speech-making is in line with theirs. Our oratory is on the same general order. Our complacency is no less apparent for being thinly veiled. Even the giving of rewards strikes a familiar note. Prizes are the order of our day, as they were of that day long past, when the French priests saw beaver skins and beaded belts presented with ceremony to the Indians who had borne a part in the dance. There are new things under the sun; we could show them to Solomon if he visited us; but speech-making and prize-giving are not among the novelties.