Père Marquette/Chapter 7

It was a warlike outbreak on the part of the Sioux ("the Iroquois of the North") that drove the Hurons and Ottawas from La Pointe, and that drove Père Marquette along with them, because of the many Huron converts whom he could not bear to leave. The Ottawas had been mad enough to provoke hostilities, and the Sioux were not foes to be lightly disregarded. They were strong, brave, generous in their fashion, and supremely competent. Their use of sweating baths in illness proves them to have been possessed of common sense. These baths are minutely described by Père Hennepin, who was long held a captive, and who attributes to them his recovery from a prostrating fever and lameness. Heated stones were piled in small huts closely covered with buffalo skins. In these huts the patients were laid, while water poured over ​the stones produced a dense vapor. This treatment, repeated two or three times a week, wrought many cures. Savages who discovered for themselves that steam baths are more medicinal than indecent dances must have been fairly intelligent.

When these lordly Indians promised to Père Marquette a safe conduct through their territory, he had returned the compliment by sending them some religious pictures, the best and brightest his scanty stock afforded. Before taking the warpath, the Sioux restored these pictures to their owner, intimating at the same time that, while they would no longer permit the Hurons or the Ottawas to remain at La Pointe, they would give them time to depart in safety—and in haste. A formal ceremony like this was beyond measure dear to the Sioux heart, and to the hearts of all Indians. It is a thousand pities that heraldry was unknown to them. Of all the institutions of civilization it would have given them the purest delight. It would have expressed to perfection their love of display, their sense of dignity and importance.

Not for a moment did the offending tribes ​mistake the purpose of their ceremonious enemy, or underrate their own peril. From the surrounding villages stores of meal and dried fish were collected. Canoes were built in frantic haste. Skins, rush mats, arms, food, clothing, the simple furnishings of savage homes, the still simpler tools of savage agriculture, were packed in bales and consigned to the frail crafts which were the fugitives' only hope. The Ottawas resolved to go to Manitoulin Island in the northern waters of Lake Huron, a spot with which they were tolerably familiar. The more numerous Hurons decided, after many councils, to risk a return to their old home on Michillimackinac Island, admirably situated at the junction of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, and so famous for its fishing that it was called in Indian parlance, "the birthplace of all fishes." From this abode of plenty they had once been rudely driven by the Iroquois. They greatly feared their ancient and cruel enemy; but, for the moment, they feared the Sioux more. Scylla was a threat, but Charybdis was a deadly certainty.

Michillimackinac (no people in the world ​were so profuse with their syllables as were the Indians) had witnessed many vicissitudes. It was, in the words of Père Dablon, who had established there the mission of St. Ignace, "an island of note." The wind-swept waters of the lakes were of an icy coldness. The winter climate was as genial as Greenland. But the light sandy soil grew maize and pumpkins, and the high rocks made observation points from which approaching enemies could be seen twenty miles away. As for the fishing, Père Dablon assures us that wherever else fish might be found, the island was their only real abode. They were casual inmates of other waters. Herring, carp, pike, whitefish, "golden fish," and sturgeon could be caught without effort. Trout—or something which he calls trout—were terrifyingly abundant, and most terrifyingly overgrown—three feet and more in length. They were so fat that the Indians, who loved grease, had difficulty in eating them, and so plentiful under the ice that a skilful harpooner could pierce half a hundred in three hours.

The vantage point of the island was its accessibility to traders who passed through the ​narrow strait on their way to and from the Georgian Bay. "It is the key for the people of the South," says Père Dablon, "as the Sault is the key to the people of the North. For in these regions there are only two passages by water for the many tribes who must seek one or the other if they want to reach the French settlements."

On the island itself, or on the adjacent mainland (the matter is still in dispute) Père Marquette, invincibly determined and invincibly patient, built a third log chapel, resembling as closely as possible the chapels at the Sault and at La Pointe. The Hurons, ever mindful of their precarious position, built a fort and a palisade to defend as best they could their utterly defenseless homes. A Huron village in 1672 was not wholly unlike a Bornean village to-day, except that in Borneo a whole community is sheltered under the same roof, in a sort of one-story apartment house, fairly well built and moderately comfortable; whereas a Huron lodge held, at the most, half-a-dozen families. Each family had its own fireside, with the result that all the inmates were dried like herring in the smoke. ​Each family had what privacy a partition of bark or skins could give it. Each family had its own bunks, and its own private supply of food, which was freely shared, its own dogs, its own children, its own dirt, and fleas, and lice, and mosquitoes. These last were common property.

Fleas and lice were not unknown to the missionaries in their own land; but mosquitoes were a novelty and the plague of their lives. Père Le Jeune describes them as "little flies, troublesome in the extreme," by which he feared he should be devoured alive. The tender French skin offered no resistance to their virulence, and even the tough and seasoned Indians regarded them with strong disfavor. According to the theology of the Natchez, one of the punishments that lay in wait for the ill-doer was to be exposed after death to their bites. Instead of a happy hunting-ground with plenty of game on which to gorge himself, he would wander naked in swamp lands, with plenty of mosquitoes to feed on him.

Père Marquette, like all the missionaries, lived in a lodge of his own; but his parochial visits enabled him to enjoy to the utmost the ​Huron housekeeping. It was said of Père Hennepin that he had an especial art in soothing the shrieking Indian children. Père Marquette claimed no such distinction. He taught the poor little things, and heard them say their prayers, and administered what simple remedies he had for their disorders. He tried to keep himself clean without offending too deeply the Indian preference for dirt; and he made headway, slow but sure, against the wall of ignorance and stolid indifference which centuries of savagery had induced. In 1672 he wrote a long letter to Père Dablon, describing his labors, his encouragements, and his disappointments. It is noticeable that he calls the Hurons Tionnontateronnons, and the Ottawas Outaouasinagaux. We have reason to be grateful that these interminable words, dear to the Indian's heart, and tripping lightly, if gutturally, from his tongue, have been merged into a few general and abbreviated terms. The mere pronouncing of so many syllables, to say nothing of writing them, must have taxed a Frenchman's memory and patience.

"One needs the grace of perseverance," wrote Père Marquette, "in dealing with savage minds ​that are without knowledge and without steadfastness. God alone can give them light and firmness while we stammer in their ears the words of Christian faith. It is all too easy for them to slip back into the grossness and superstition in which they and their fathers before them have been reared. Nevertheless, when I was away for a fortnight last summer, my little flock came daily to the chapel to pray. The children sang their hymns, and asked over and over again when I was coming back. On my return, men and women gathered to meet me, and accompanied me joyfully to the chapel. I trust that what they do now from respect and custom, they will one day do with keener faith and love.

"I gladly attended their great pumpkin feast [it sounds like Thanksgiving Day], and bade them be grateful to God for their plentiful harvests. In the autumn I paid many visits to the fields; and, as we have no church bell, I make a daily round and summon my parishioners to prayer. The hunting this year has been unusually good. The woods have been full of bears, stags, beavers, and wildcats. Nowhere has there been a lack of food."

​Then follows a recital of the missionary's efforts to rid the Indian mind of its most tenacious superstition, a profound and apprehenhensive belief in dreams. Freud would have welcomed the Hurons to his heart, would have told them shocking things, and have intensified their dismal sense of uneasiness. Sir Arthur Mitchell would have found in them an illustration of his theory that we are all decadent in our dreams. Marcel Foucault would have traced the connection between such dreams and the appointed destruction of the tribe. But the French Jesuits, assured that the chaotic anarchy of dreamland, in which the sanest of us is mad, has no bearing upon the ordered realities of life, contented themselves with telling the savages repeatedly, and not very successfully, that dreams meant nothing at all. Père Le Jeune says that the implicit reliance of the Hurons and the Algonquins upon their dreams made them as undependable as the weather. Père Charlevoix, who published in 1744 an account of his wanderings in Canada, tells us of an Indian who, having dreamed that he had lost a finger, promptly cut it off the next day, thus meeting ​fate a little more than halfway. Père Marquette, by dint of argument and ridicule, succeeded at last in convincing the hunters that if one of them chanced to dream about a bear, it was no good reason for refusing to kill a bear the next day. Perhaps the instinct of the chase lent weight to the missionary's words. They bore fruit in a decrease of superstitious fear and an increase of coveted game.

Other interests the Frenchmen had in the wild life they lived. These were scientific rather than spiritual. The winds and the tides were objects of keen curiosity and careful comment. "This island," wrote Père Marquette, "is surrounded by three great Lakes which seem to be incessantly playing at ball with one another. The winds from the Lake of the Illinois no sooner subside than they are hurled back by the Lake of the Hurons, and those from Lake Superior are the highest and fiercest of all. In the autumn and winter months there is a succession of storms; and with these mighty waters all about us, we seem to be living in the heart of a hurricane." The tides, or what appear to be tides, he ascribes to the action of the winds, "which drive ​the waves before them in a recurrent flow and ebb." He also thinks it possible that Lake Superior has a subterranean outlet. "We have discovered a great discharge of water gushing up from the bottom of the Lake, and making whirlpools in the strait that lies between the Lake of the Hurons and that of the Illinois."

It was, however, the all-important subject of copper mines that deeply interested priests, donnés, and traders. The French coveted this precious metal, and the Indians guarded it with profound and jealous care. They had uses of their own for it, and they held it to be a sacred, or semi-sacred substance, dear to the heart of a somewhat vague but powerful and malignant deity. The pits on the Isle Royale and on the southern shore of Lake Superior yielded to their primitive mining lumps of copper from which they fashioned spearheads, arrowheads, knives, and occasional ornaments. Père Lallemont, writing in 1640, waxed eloquent over the amethyst-studded rocks that bordered the mighty lake, and over the pieces of copper, as big as a man's fist, which he had seen again and again. Père Le Jeune wrote to his Superior that ​copper was in use by the savages; but that they did not know, or would not tell, the whereabouts of the mines.

It is from Père Allouez and Père Dablon that we get the most vivid accounts of the sacredness in which this beautiful metal was held. Père Allouez wrote in 1667 that he had seen large lumps of copper lying on the bed of Lake Superior, and plainly visible through the clear water. The Algonquins called these lumps the "riches of the gods," and believed they brought good fortune if undisturbed. Some of the braves possessed lumps of their own, which they cherished carefully, and which they bequeathed with solemnity to their sons. Père Dablon told at length the weird story of the floating island which moved hither and thither with the variable winds, and which was the abode of a god. Four Indians, landing on this island, and unaware of its sacred and unstable character, built a fire on the smooth stones which covered its shore, and proceeded to cook their fish. When they had eaten and the fire had cooled, they discovered that what they had taken for stones were pieces of pure copper; and, ​hastily reëmbarking, they carried the precious metal away with them. Scarcely, however, had they left the land when a voice like angry thunder sounded in their ears: "Who are these robbers," it said, "who steal the toys of my children?" Terrified beyond measure, they turned back and replaced the copper on the beach; but it was too late. They had laid profane hands on a sacred thing, and the injured god was not to be so easily appeased. Three of the savages sickened and died on their way home; and the fourth had barely time and strength to reach his village and relate his adventure before he, too, paid the price of sacrilege. For imagination and a sense of fear—that motive power of heathen creeds—this tale rivals Lord Dunsany's "Gods of the Mountain," and "A Night in an Inn." But Lord Dunsany's vagabonds are stout-hearted liars and dare-devils. The poor Indians sinned in ignorance and failed to escape their doom.

It was the search for copper which prompted Talon to send Daumont de Saint-Lusson in 1670 to trade with the Indians on the shore of Lake Superior, and to take formal possession of the ​country in the name of Louis the Fourteenth. Saint-Lusson was accompanied by one of the ablest and most daring of French voyageurs, Nicolas Perrot, who at an age when the modern youth is being slowly and amply educated, had traveled far into the wilderness, had established friendly relations with Indian tribes whose languages he spoke fluently, and had written a lively account of his adventures. It is thanks to him, and to that indefatigable chronicler, Père Dablon, that we know the details of the impressive ceremonies with which the fleurs-de-lis were raised on one of the green and lovely hillsides of the Sault de Ste. Marie.

Fifteen Frenchmen composed Saint-Lusson's meager following. Fourteen Indian tribes had been summoned to the great pow-wow, and the braves came in goodly numbers, fired with curiosity and misgiving. It was June. The Sault was at its fairest. The French soldiers were fully armed. Three Jesuits gave the ceremony a semi-sacerdotal character. A great cross of wood was raised and solemnly blessed, while the Frenchmen, uncovered, sang the Vexilla Regis. Then a post of fine cedar bearing the royal arms en​graved on a copper plate was erected, and the Frenchmen sang the Exaudiat. Then Père Allouez made a lengthy address to the assembled Indians. He spoke of the Christian creed and what the cross stood for. He spoke of the power of France, of the magnificence of the French monarch, of his unquestioned authority, his beautiful cities, his wealth, his armies, his victories. "Being well versed in the language of the savages," wrote Père Dablon in the Relations, "he was able to adapt himself to their understanding, and the account he gave of the king's incomparable greatness so overwhelmed them with astonishment that they were smitten to silence, not having words in which to express their wonder."

This effect being produced, Saint-Lusson arose, sword in hand, and declared the country with its lakes and rivers to be the property of His Most Christian Majesty, and the natives to be his subjects and vassals, "bound to obey his laws and follow his customs." In return they were to receive "succor and protection from the incursions and invasions of their enemies." The nations of Europe were notified in formal ​phraseology that they might not settle upon any part of the land without the concurrence of France. Saint-Lusson's words were faithfully translated by Perrot, who acted as interpreter. At their close the soldiers fired a volley of musketry and shouted Vive le Roi! The savages yelped with sudden terror at the noise of the guns, and then subsided into dignified apathy. A feast closed the day, a great bonfire was lighted, and the Te Deum solemnly sung, "to thank God on behalf of the poor Indians who were now subjects of so great and powerful a monarch." The next morning the French retired in good order, and the braves returned to their tribes, having first carefully removed the royal arms which they feared might be in the nature of a charm. The beau geste had been made with punctilious propriety, and everything remained as it had been before.

Yet not quite the same, for among the little group of Frenchmen was Louis Joliet, who accompanied Saint-Lusson on his further expedition along the shore of Lake Superior, and learned more and more about the river that only Indian eyes had seen. All that was told him he ​reported faithfully to Talon. The intendant was ill at ease at hearing nothing from La Salle, whom he had sent—with the help of the Sulpicians—on an expedition to the southwest, hoping that he would "some day find the passage to Mexico." La Salle had, after his fashion, disappeared in the wilderness. None knew whether he were living or dead. It was necessary to find another pioneer to take up his task, and that was an easy matter in New France where the love of adventure ran high, where nobody calculated on living long, and where everybody was keen to do something with life while he had it. The colonists were imperfect men; but very few of them reached perdition by way of safety.