Père Marquette/Chapter 18

The earliest mention of the Illinois in Père Marquette's letters occurs when he was stationed at the mission of La Pointe, on Chequamegon Bay. They had not then captured his heart and fancy; but he had encountered some hunters of the tribe who seemed to be "of a tolerably good disposition," and he had begun to study their language. The one thing definite and unusual that he had to say about them was that they "kept their word inviolate."

I have already pointed out that missionaries and traders were, as a rule, less biased in favor of these intelligent Indians than was Père Marquette. La Salle placed little confidence in their friendship; but it was La Salle's unhappy fate to be forever disappointed in his friends. Père Charlevoix wrote about them with ill-concealed ​irritation. What annoyed him was that they could not be brought to see their own shortcomings, in which respect they were remarkably like all civilized nations to-day. He enumerated their many bad qualities—fickleness, treachery, deceit, thievishness, brutality, and gluttony. He was convinced that other tribes disliked and despised them. But were they humbled or cast down on that account? Not a whit! They were "as haughty and self-complacent" as if they had been the model Indians of North America. But—and it is the biggest "but" on record in these pages—once converted to Christianity, they mended their ways and never relapsed into heathenism; and once allies of France, they never went over to her foes.

So was Père Marquette justified in his trust. Père Charlevoix admitted that the Illinois were "the only savages that never sought peace with their enemies to our prejudice." This loyalty was all the more praiseworthy because it was unusual. The Indians pursued as a rule a wavering and childish policy in their relations with the warring white men. They were capricious foes and uneasy friends, as troublesome often in one rôle ​as in the other. But the Illinois stood firm in their allegiance, realizing intelligently that France was their only bulwark against the Iroquois. In return the French did all in their power to protect them. The indomitable Henri de Tonty, bravest and wiliest of fighters, received a grievous wound at the hands of an Iroquois warrior while pleading their cause in the enemy's camp. Parkman gives a ghastly account of La Salle nearing the Mississippi in 1680, and finding in a trampled meadow the half-consumed bodies of Illinois squaws bound to stakes, and all the other hideous tokens of a prolonged orgy of torture. Scattered members of the tribe joined his colony at Starved Rock in 1682, placing themselves gladly under his protection. It is said that this ill-omened spot owed its name to a band of Illinois braves who took refuge on its summit from the encircling Pottawattamies, and who perished there of starvation rather than yield to their foes.

One cause of good-will between the French and these faithful allies was the fact that a number of Canadian settlers married women of the tribe, finding them "intelligent and tractable," ​the latter quality induced no doubt by the discipline to which they had been subjected. When in 1725 it was thought advisable to send a small party of friendly warriors to France, the Illinois chief, Chikagou, was one of the number chosen. These splendid "savages of the Mississippi" were much admired and fêted in Paris, and went back laden with gifts. The Duchess d'Orléans presented Chikagou with a handsome snuffbox, which unserviceable cadeau was cherished by the urbane chief as his most precious possession. He refused to part with it to would-be buyers, even for tobacco. "An unusual circumstance among Indians," comments one of the missionaries. "For the most part, they quickly tire of what they have, and passionately desire what they see but do not possess." One more proof—if proof were needed—of the universal sameness of mankind.

In still another regard the Illinois chief resembled the travelled gentleman of to-day. He wanted naturally to tell his people of the wonders he had seen; of the height of the French houses, five cabins piled one on top of another until they reached the summit of the tallest tree; of the ​multitude of people in the streets, as numerous as blades of grass on the prairies or mosquitoes in the woods; of the strange huts made of leather and drawn by horses in which men and women went on journeys; of the French king's palace at Versailles. What, one wonders, could a North American Indian have thought, or said, of Versailles! It would have been an unalloyed pleasure for poor Chikagou to talk of these things if only his hearers could have been brought to credit them; but this they refused to do. They said simply that they did not believe in such marvels, and went their scornful way.

It was after the Louisiana massacre in 1730 (two hundred French settlers killed by the Natchez Indians, aided and abetted by the supposedly friendly Yazous) that the fidelity of the Illinois was tested and stood the test. The Tchikachas, always restless and hostile, thought this a good time to seduce them from their fealty; but the Illinois, wise as well as staunch, refused all proposals, and sent a delegation to New Orleans to express their grief at the massacre, and their unbroken loyalty to France. Chikagou accompanied this delegation. He brought with ​him two calumets, differently decorated, which he laid on a mat of deerskin edged with porcupine quills. "Here," he said, "are two messages, one of religion, and one of peace or war as you shall determine. . . . We have come a great distance to weep with you for the death of the French, and to offer our warriors to strike those hostile nations whom you may wish to designate. You have but to speak. We are of the prayer. Grant then your protection to us and to our black-robes."

It was a triumphant hour for the spirit of the little dead missionary lying in his forgotten grave at St. Ignace.

If there still survive Americans who remember reading "Hiawatha" when they were young, they may have recognized in the flowery speech of the Illinois chief to Père Marquette and Joliet the words of welcome which Longfellow put into the mouth of his hero when the first priest, "With the cross upon his bosom," came drifting to the shore. Shea's Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley, which was published three years before "Hiawatha," contains the full text of Père Marquette's journal in French and ​in English. With this text Longfellow was evidently familiar. The superb extravagance of the chief's remarks seemed to him natural and reasonable in the mouth of a friendly savage, and he turned them into the balanced singsong of his verse:

It may be cynically observed that the warmth of Hiawatha's greeting is robbed of its personal flavor by the fact that he himself was departing at once from the land to which he so cordially ​welcomed the stranger. He bequeathed the black-robe as a blessing to his people; but he took himself as fast and as far as he could from the encroachments of civilization. Nevertheless, it is pleasant to record that the name of Père Marquette, who is briefly mentioned in a note to "Hiawatha," is indelibly associated with a poem which has been read for many years, translated into many tongues, and accepted by many Americans as an epic of Indian life and of the noblest Indian traditions.

The survival of such traditions was attested over and over again by missionaries who could not have cherished many illusions about the savages they knew so well; but who were, nevertheless, as I have pointed out, their most generous critics. When the romance with which poets and novelists had encircled the red man faded in the cold north light of history, it became the fashion, and has remained the fashion, to strip him bare of every vestige of goodness. The list of his misdeeds is naturally a long one. I find an English biographer, Mr. F. J. Huddleston, author of Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, quoting with approval the sweeping charges of Mr. J. W. Steele, ​and declaring them applicable to every generation of North American Indians:

"Brave only in superior numbers or in ambush, honest only in being a consummate hypocrite, merry only at the sight of suffering inflicted by his own hand, friendly only through cunning, and hospitable never; above all sublimely mendacious and a liar always, the Indian, as he really is to those who, unfortunately, know him, seems poor material out of which to manufacture a hero, or frame a romance. The one redeeming fact upon his record is that he has never been tamed and never been a servant. Neither has the hyena."

It is always easier to be calumniatory than discriminating; but even allowing for the deterioration caused by intercourse with white men, this picture seems a trifle overdrawn. The Indians were certainly cruel, as are all savage people. They were liars, as are most people, savage and civilized. They were friendly to their friends, as are all the people of the world. But to deny them hospitality and courage is to run counter to evidence. Of course they fought from ambush when they could do so. Fighting was not for them any​thing resembling cricket. It was not the thin red line of courage. It was a grim, unpitying affair, carrying infinite possibilities of disaster. They loved it because they had the instinct of untutored men; but they would not have loved it if they had not possessed some quality of courage. The circumstances under which they fought made them in their simple fashion strategists; and Mr. Huddleston himself admits that strategy, when practised by savages, is commonly spoken of as treacherous.

Unhappily for the Indian's reputation, the one offense of which he was guiltless was authorship. The white man did all the telling. We know about his side of the question; but for the red man's side we depend upon an occasional speech (probably misquoted) in council. If the native American could have penned year by year the annals of his people since the first coming of the European, what reading it would have made even for Mr. Steele! The history of the Cherokee Indians in Georgia (one instance out of many) is tragic with injustice. The partition of their land—granted them by the federal government—was like the partition of Poland on a pitifully ​small scale. Yet John Marshall was their only friend, and he was powerless to help them.

Mr. Huddleston says that Mr. Steele is "a great authority on Indians," but so were the Jesuits who lived and died among them, and whose records are as free from sentiment as from hostility. It would not have been easy to wax sentimental over savages whose personal habits were so remarkably offensive to the eyes, ears, and noses of the civilized. Yet the missionaries, after years of dreadfully close contact, admitted over and over again the existence of qualities which compelled their admiration. Père Marquette, indeed, had always a friendly word to say for his charges; but Père Marquette was fairly fortunate in his experiences, and very fortunate in his temper and disposition. Père Brébeuf not only lived among Indians, but met his death at their hands. His voice deserves a hearing.

"The savages," he writes in the Relations, "are liars, thieves, pertinacious beggars, and inordinately lazy. Yet they understand how to cement union among themselves. On their return from fishing, hunting, and trading, they exchange gifts. If one has had better luck than his neigh​bors, he spreads a generous feast. Their hospitality is without bounds. They never close their doors upon a stranger, and, having once received him into their cabins, they share with him whatever they chance to have. Their patience in poverty, famine, and sickness is beyond understanding. I have seen this year whole villages reduced to a small daily portion of sagamité; yet never an irritable action, and never a word of complaint."

This is enough. If there is one thing more than another which our superb civilization understands it is the art of complaining. The crumpled rose leaf has become more than the hardiest body can endure. Early in the present century, Henry Adams, who could complain with the best of us, wrote in bitterness of spirit: "Prosperity never before imagined, power never yet wielded by man, speed never reached by anything but a meteor, had made the world irritable, nervous, querulous, unreasonable, and afraid."

This was in 1905. In less than a quarter of a century we have grown infinitely more prosperous and infinitely more powerful. We have learned what speed really is. Mr. Adams did not ​know the meaning of the word. Are we now even-tempered, self-controlled, tolerant, reasonable, and fearless? Has the eternal push, the coercive drive which spins us on our way made us so nobly receptive to those qualities which the best minds have bequeathed to the highest civilizations that—seen from our lofty eminence—the savage and the hyena are one? To the modern man who is intelligent enough to be modest it would seem that the Indian who accepted without useless complaint what Santayana calls "the brutal, innocent injustice of nature," had learned at least part of the law of life, and was qualified to teach at least one lesson to the nations which held him in scorn.