Père Marquette/Chapter 14

While Joliet was struggling with fate, and Frontenac was preparing to add a finer luster to his governorship, Père Marquette was resting quietly at St. François Xavier's and slowly regaining his strength. He was as unteased by ambition as by anxiety. The impersonal attitude of the Jesuit priest was never better illustrated than in the case of this French missionary. In obedience to his superior's orders he had gone upon a quest. He had been glad to go because he was young and ardent. He had striven with all his might to reach his goal. He had returned successful, had sent in his papers, and was now waiting with a serene mind the next move in the game. The consequences of his discovery (beyond the possible Christianizing of savages) did not deeply concern him. No recognition of his services came from France. Enlightened and ​amiable societies which distribute medals were probably rare in those days. If praise reached him from the civil or ecclesiastical authorities of Quebec—to that much at least he was entitled—we know nothing about it. Had anyone told him that his name would be a familiar one for centuries to come, he would have felt such a statement to be pure absurdity.

Nevertheless, in the sedate and serious soul of this unsolicitous priest there lingered one desire with which his associates were perfectly well acquainted, and which was about to be gratified. In the autumn of 1674 he received orders to found a new mission among the Illinois, those friendly and intelligent Indians who had been from the first the cherished children of his heart. He had shown himself to be remarkably adroit in his dealings with all savages, and this had been attributed by his superiors to the wide friendliness of his outlook, which had enabled him to see their not very conspicuous virtues, and to his conciliating manner, which tempered the dignity of the priest with the cordiality of the comrade. The most favorable pictures we have of the Indians are drawn by missionaries. It ​was but natural that traders should have regarded them with suspicion. The great principle of giving little and getting much, which is the foundation of all trade, is ill calculated to produce good-will. To the pioneer farmer the natives were dangerous neighbors, cordially feared and hated. The priests who had nothing to lose but their lives, and nothing to gain but salvation, were able to take a more comprehensive and less prejudiced view. If they emphasized the unpleasantness of personal contact with unwashed, lice-covered, rude, and licentious savages, they did justice to certain qualities, noble in themselves, and which dimly outlined a sense of social responsibility.

So it was that when the Arkansas Indians proposed to kill Père Marquette and Joliet, their chief refused to permit his hospitality to be violated. So it was that the Illinois sought by courtesy and hospitality to secure the protection of France. Père du Perron, who lived on terms of uncomfortable intimacy with the Hurons, admitted that they were "importunate, childish, lying, proud, and lazy"; but hastened to add that they were also "patient, loyal, generous, and hos​pitable." Their improvement under salutary influences is vouched for by a dozen missionaries; and Père Charlevoix adds the weight of his testimony a full half century after Père du Perron's death. He can find no praise strong enough for the Christian Hurons, for the ordered simplicity of their lives, and for a goodness "which seems to be natural to them." They had even learned—the squaws especially—to sing hymns softly; and this Père Charlevoix considered a sign and symbol of civilization. He had lived too long in courtly and fastidious French society to acquire the superb indifference of the missionaries to the desecration of music and of art. Indian singing appeared to him just what it was—"tiresome, fatiguing, monotonous, disagreeable, and ferocious." The devotional daubs which passed for pictures in the Récollet church of Quebec, and which, like devotional daubs all the world over, gave pious pleasure to those who looked upon them, offended his cultivated taste. In vain he was reminded that the savages were not critical, and that the paintings, though ill done, awakened correct emotions in the minds of the congregation. He merely replied that when pic​tures were as bad as that, they ought to be removed from the sight of men.

In regard to the almost universal trait of thievishness, Père Charlevoix admits that even in his day the Indians, especially the unconverted Indians, would steal; but he adds that if the squaws ventured to do so—and were found out—they were punished. It was also his experience that whenever he complained to a chief that he had been robbed, the indignant sachem saw to it that his property was promptly restored. The only drawback to this method of obtaining restitution lay in the fact that he was expected to make a handsome present to the chief, and a lesser one to the thief who had been deprived of his spoils, so that he was not much better off than if he had submitted to the original loss. It was a little like the modern system under which stolen property is regained, and detective and burglar share in the reward.

Parkman's insistence upon the Indians' aptitude for such elementary politics as suited their mode of life is the result of his familiarity with the missionaries' reports. The observance of certain conciliating rites and ceremonies, the swift ​and sure recognition of leadership, the code of public courtesy which contrasted oddly with private and personal rudeness, the obedience to unwritten laws which differed in different tribes—these things are all matters of comment in the Relations. Père du Perron was of the opinion that the savages showed more intelligence, and exhibited more tricks and subtleties in trade and formal intercourse with white men, than did the shrewdest merchants and citizens of France. Père Brébeuf balanced their petty thefts with their generous hospitality, their swinish gluttony with the "perfect quiet and dignity" with which they bore hunger that bordered on starvation. Above all, he observed in them a desire to strengthen the union among friendly tribes by feasts, by exchanging visits and gifts, and by councils without end. They would have been at home and at ease in Geneva.

These efforts at unity among friends were nullified by the hostility of enemies. Tribe warred against tribe, and inherited quarrels were cherished as sacredly as inherited truces. The savages, thinly scattered over an immense area, speaking strange tongues, differing widely in customs and ​intelligence, and depending for their lives upon their accustomed hunting grounds, were not sufficiently far-seeing to spare themselves the perpetual waste of war. Their only method of replenishing their exhausted strength was by the adoption of conquered enemies into a conquering tribe. This meant that the conquerors were obliged to forego, in the interests of public welfare, the anticipated pleasure of torturing their captives to death. The adopted Indians remained faithful to their new comrades. An ancient code bound them to loyalty for life.

In this connection, Parkman tells a strange and tragic tale. The Eries, living on the south shore of Lake Erie, had captured an Onondaga chief of great repute. He offered himself for adoption as the alternative of being burned at the stake. The matter was discussed in council, and, in view of the courage and sagacity of the captive, his offer was accepted. There was a young Erie squaw then absent from the village. Her brother had been recently killed by the Senecas, who, like the Onondagas, belonged to the Iroquois nation. It was decided that the captured warrior should be given to her as a brother in the place of the one ​she had lost. Accordingly, he was released and handsomely decorated with feathers and beads. The pipe of peace was smoked, and when the girl returned she was told that a new relative awaited her. Furiously she refused to accept him, and demanded as her right that he should be put to death. In vain the headsmen of the village argued with her. In vain she was shown the handsome young Onondagan. Nothing could move her from her purpose, and the custom on which she based her claim was an ancient one. Even a squaw had certain privileges which might not be denied. The captive was stripped of his finery, bound to the stake, and burned before her eyes. Verily "the hearts of women are as the hearts of wolves." It may be added that the Iroquois took a bloody revenge for the death of the warrior; but of the girl's fate we know nothing.

Such were the characteristic inconsistencies of the savages with whom Père Marquette had invariably succeeded in establishing cordial relations. He had lived among them for only nine years, and those nine years had been divided among different tribes; but he had made many friends and some converts wherever he had ​been sent, and the Illinois mission promised him a fruitful field of labor. His health was thought to be reëstablished; and in October, 1674, he started with two French boatmen, one of whom had accompanied him to the Mississippi, for a village on the upper waters of the Illinois. The season was late for such a journey. Storms and adverse winds delayed them from the start. Once past the heavy portage that lay between Sturgeon Bay and Lake Michigan they embarked on the lake in company with a little fleet of canoes, five carrying Pottawattamy Indians and four carrying Illinois. All were bound for the same destination, and the Illinois evinced their good-will by advising Père Marquette to keep his boat close to theirs. They knew the lake and he did not.

The diary written at this period is fragmentary. Conditions were not favorable to composition, and the brief notes were to be expanded later on into one of those voluminous reports which enabled Quebec and France intelligently to control their missions. The events of the journey were of a simple order: game killed, meals eaten, and the best of many bad sites chosen for the night's camp. Once, when they had built their fire, there came ​looming through the dusk the tall figure of an Indian carrying the carcass of a deer slung over his shoulders. It proved to be an Illinois warrior, whose name, as spelled phonetically by Père Marquette, was Chachagwessiou, and who generously shared his spoil with the wayfarers. Once the priest wandered too far inland, and found himself unable to retrace his steps or cross a deep and rapid stream. His boatmen had much difficulty in rescuing him; and rising winds held them stormbound on the banks of this stream for four and twenty hours. Once they were delayed five days by the turbulence of the lake waters, and by the first snowstorm of the season. A boatman named Pierre busied himself in mending an Indian's gun; and the priest took the opportunity to instruct the savages—who had elevated a wolfskin to the dignity of a manitou—in some of the simpler truths of Christianity.

By the 22d of November the cold had grown intense, and the snow lay a foot deep on the ground. Game was scarce, but Pierre, who was as skilful a hunter as a boatman, managed to shoot three bustards and three wild turkeys, the latter a much esteemed delicacy. Hard though ​conditions were, the travelers met a party of Mascouten Indians encamped for the winter in nine small wigwams, and keeping themselves alive and vigorous where white men would have died. They feasted or starved according to their luck in the chase, and they regarded the inclemency of the long winter with stoical unconcern. Comparing his feeble strength with theirs, Père Marquette was lost in wonder at the hardihood which forced nature's hand, and bid defiance to her rulings.

For more and more clearly it was borne in upon the priest's mind that the task which had been set him, and which he had accepted with so much gladness, was beyond his power of fulfilment. The first day of December found him weak but able to paddle, and pleased with the smoothness of the water. "Navigation on the lake is now fairly good from one portage to another," he wrote cheerfully. "There is no crossing to be made, and we can land anywhere, keeping out of the reach of the wind. The prairies are very fine and there is no lack of deer." On the fourth they entered the Chicago River, and ascended it two leagues when ice blocked their way. On ​the eighth, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, Père Marquette was too ill to say mass. A halt was called, and a council held. To stay in this bleak spot meant countless hardships, but to press on meant death. It was decided to remain.

The boatmen cut down trees, and built a log hut like the one in which Joliet and the two Récollet priests, Père Dollier and Père Galinée, had passed the winter on the shore of Lake Erie. Compared to the hunting wigwams of the Indians, it was a real shelter; and, if one did not mind being choked and blinded by smoke, it could be kept warm. As for game, the hard frost made the deer easy to track (four were killed in four days), and brought the starving birds close to their doors. "We contented ourselves with killing three or four turkeys out of the many that came about our cabin because they were dying of hunger. Jacques [the second boatman] shot a partridge, which was exactly like those of France, except that it had two ruffs of three or four long feathers which covered its neck."

The little party were not wholly isolated from their fellow men. The Illinois Indians with the hunter, Chachagwessiou, who had traveled in ​their company, were indeed compelled to press on to their village. They had been trading with the French, and were carrying back the much needed goods for which they had sold their pelts. But other savages passed the hut, and with these Père Marquette eagerly conversed, sharing his game with them, refusing them powder which he could not spare, and trading tobacco for three fine oxskins, under which he and his companions lay snug and warm in the long winter nights.

Nothing could exceed the passionate desire of the Indians for French tobacco. They had always held this precious plant in high esteem. The Hurons and the Tionontates, a tribe allied to the Algonquins, grew it most successfully. Indeed the Tionontates were usually called the Petuns or Tobacco nation because it was their only harvest, and made them, according to savage standards, affluent. We have seen that in the calumet dance the Illinois offered a puff at the sacred pipe to the sun, conceiving that no greater honor could be shown even to a god. Père Allouez says that the Outaouacs, before starting to hunt, to fish, or to fight, held a ceremonious feast in honor of the sun. A long harangue was made to the luminary, ​and as a crowning rite the chief broke a cake of tobacco into two pieces and cast them in the fire. While they burned and the smoke curled upward, the braves cried aloud, calling attention to the magnitude of their sacrifice.

It is greatly to the credit of these untutored savages that they should have discerned the superiority of French tobacco, prepared with the careful art of civilization, and that they should have preferred a delicate and ephemeral pleasure to the satisfaction of sharper needs or grosser appetites. Wandering Illinois cast their beaver skins, the most valuable of their pelts, at Père Marquette's feet, asking in return a handful of this precious commodity. In the account books of the Jesuits, tobacco figures prominently; the invoice of the Illinois mission in 1702 showing among other items thirty pounds of this valuable merchandise. The entries in the Journaux des Jesuites, which were never published with other Relations, tell how many pounds of tobacco were given away in Quebec to visiting Indians, who always expected douceurs. Whether the governor desired to conciliate or to reward, he made the same welcome presentation. A sum of money was ​set aside every year for "gifts"; and in 1702 the biggest expenditure charged to this account was for tobacco—the reason given being that the savages were "passionately fond of it."

The hunters were not Père Marquette's only visitors, for word of his whereabouts had been carried over the frozen wilds, and from the Illinois village many leagues away came solicitous Indians, bringing him a generous share of their scanty winter stores, meal, pumpkins, and dried meat. Also twelve beaverskins as a token of esteem, and a rush mat. They encouraged the sick man to remain in their country "until he died," and probably thought that day was not far distant. In return for their kindness Père Marquette presented them with appropriate gifts, and this time we are told what they were: one hatchet, two large knives, three clasp knives, a quantity of glass beads, and two double mirrors.

On the 16th of January a French surgeon, or at least a Frenchman who claimed to be a surgeon, made his unexpected appearance at the cabin door. He and a trader named Pierre Moreau, usually known as La Taupine, were wintering eighteen leagues away; and he had bravely ​journeyed that distance, accompanied by an Indian guide, to give what help he could. He brought with him some meal and some dried blueberries, the nearest approach to a delicacy which a winter in the woods afforded. A little fruit was at all times a rare boon, and a bunch of French raisins represented the highest peak of luxury. Even in the missions they were usually reserved for the sick. The visitor stayed several days, and returned to his post, having duly confessed his sins and communicated. He carried messages to the waiting Illinois. In the spring the priest would be with them.

In the spring he was with them, but many hard weeks had still to be weathered. Père Marquette and his companions began a novena to the Blessed Virgin, begging urgently that she would help him keep his word. He had set his earnest soul upon starting this new mission before he died. By the middle of February the surrounding savages were making ready for their long journey to the trading stations. As soon as the lake became navigable they would start. There was no real lack of food. Partridges were shy but could not escape good marksmen, and deer, wasted by ​hunger, were all too easily killed. Sometimes the poor creatures were so lean that their carcasses were left lying in the snow. With the first thaw of March, flocks of pigeons made their appearance. Everything pointed to a breaking up of the ice; but the three householders had no conception of the speed and violence with which ice broke. On the night of the 28th they heard the loud cracking, and listened undisturbed. On the 29th the water, released from its winter bondage, rose so high that the hut was flooded. There was barely time to drag out their few possessions and reach a hillock, where they slept on the ground under cover of the friendly oxskins.

This was the signal for departure. Père Marquette's health had greatly improved. The dysentery which had so long wasted his strength was gone. He gave thanks to his dear Protectress, and made ready to leave the lonely spot where he had passed nearly four months. So much has been written about the hardships of those four months, so desolate is the picture in our minds of the rude hut open to winds and weather, of the heavy rains, the bitter cold, the sick man lying on a mat and sustaining life upon the kind of food his ​faithful boatmen were able to provide, that it is salutary and heartening to read the brief paragraph in which the priest himself sums up his experience:

"The Blessed and Immaculate Virgin has taken such care of us during our wintering that we have not lacked provisions, and still have left a large sack of corn and some fat. We also lived very pleasantly, and my illness did not prevent my saying mass every day. We were unable to keep Lent, except on Fridays and Saturdays."

That brief line, "We also lived very pleasantly," is unsurpassed in letters. It sums up the life story of the man who wrote it. In all ages men have been found who met "their duty and their death" with heroism, who did all that men could do, and bore all that men must bear. But, for the most part, they have been aware of their deeds and of their sufferings. Père Marquette failed to see himself in a heroic light. His voyage of discovery had been blessed by success, for which he took little credit. His winter in the woods was an ordinary happening, and regrettable only because it delayed the work he was so keen to begin.

At any rate, it was over, the water-logged hut ​being no longer habitable. Therefore on the 31st of March the three travelers took up their interrupted journey. They carried the canoe over the muddy portage which led to the Des Plaines River, only to find the low-lying land flooded to the depth of twelve feet. All they could do was to seek a spot high enough for safety, and wait there ten days until the water fell. They were joined by the French surgeon who had essayed, with the help of an Indian boatman, to carry his beaver skins to Quebec, but had found the river unnavigable. The little party lived on the precious corn saved by Père Marquette from his winter's store, and on the wild ducks which they shot daily. The surgeon decided to make a cache of his pelts—that is bury them in a spot carefully marked—and to accompany the priest to his destination. His companionship was of great service. By the second week of April the floods had subsided, the portages were fairly firm and dry, and the journey, now a short one, was light-heartedly resumed. Floating down the Des Plaines until its junction with the Illinois was reached, the two canoes cautiously descended this stream still swollen by heavy rains. On its ​shore lay the village that Père Marquette had come so far and striven so hard to reach; and here, according to an old letter of Père Dablon's, the tired little missionary was received "as an angel from heaven."