France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third

F >> Francis Parkman >> France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third

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On the eleventh or twelfth of April, they stopped in the afternoon to
repair their canoe; and Hennepin busied himself in daubing it with pitch,
while the others cooked a turkey. Suddenly a fleet of Sioux canoes swept
into sight, bearing a war-party of a hundred and twenty naked savages,
who, on seeing the travellers, raised a hideous clamor; and some leaping
ashore and others into the water, they surrounded the astonished Frenchmen
in an instant. [Footnote: The edition of 1683 says that there were thirty-
three canoes: that of 1697 raises the number to fifty. The number of
Indians is the same in both. The later narrative is more in detail than
the former.] Hennepin held out the peace-pipe, but one of them snatched it
from him. Next, he hastened to proffer a gift of Martinique tobacco, which
was better received. Some of the old warriors repeated the name _Miamiha_,
giving him to understand that they were a war-party on the way to attack
the Miamis; on which Hennepin, with the help of signs and of marks which
he drew on the sand with a stick, explained that the Miamis had gone
across the Mississippi beyond their reach. Hereupon, he says that three or
four old men placed their hands on his head, and began a dismal wailing;
while he with his handkerchief wiped away their tears in order to evince
sympathy with their affliction, from whatever cause arising.
Notwithstanding this demonstration of tenderness, they refused to smoke
with him in his peace-pipe, and forced him and his companions to embark
and paddle across the river; while they all followed behind, uttering
yells and howlings which froze the missionary's blood.

On reaching the farther side, they made their camp-fires, and allowed
their prisoners to do the same. Accau and Du Gay slung their kettle; while
Hennepin, to propitiate the Sioux, carried to them two turkeys, of which
there were several in the canoe. The warriors had seated themselves in a
ring, to debate on the fate of the Frenchmen; and two chiefs presently
explained to the friar, by significant signs, that it had been resolved
that his head should be split with a war-club. This produced the effect
which was no doubt intended. Hennepin ran to the canoe, and quickly
returned with one of the men, both loaded with presents, which he threw
into the midst of the assembly; and then, bowing his head, offered them at
the same time a hatchet with which to kill him if they wished to do so.
His gifts and his submission seemed to appease them. They gave him and his
companions a dish of beaver's flesh; but, to his great concern, they
returned his peace-pipe, an act which he interpreted as a sign of danger.
That night, the Frenchmen slept little, expecting to be murdered before
morning. There was, in fact, a great division of opinion among the Sioux.
Some were for killing them, and taking their goods; while others, eager
above all things that French traders should come among them with the
knives, hatchets, and guns of which they had heard the value, contended
that it would be impolitic to discourage the trade by putting to death its
pioneers.

Scarcely had morning dawned on the anxious captives, when a young chief,
naked, and painted from head to foot, appeared before them, and asked for
the pipe, which the friar gladly gave him. He filled it, smoked it, made
the warriors do the same, and, having given this hopeful pledge of amity,
told the Frenchmen that, since the Miamis were out of reach, the war-party
would return home, and that they must accompany them. To this Hennepin
gladly agreed, having, as he declares, his great work of exploration so
much at heart that he rejoiced in the prospect of achieving it even in
their company.

He soon, however, had a foretaste of the affliction in store for him; for,
when he opened his breviary and began to mutter his morning devotion, his
new companions gathered about him with faces that betrayed their
superstitious terror, and gave him to understand that his book was a bad
spirit with which he must hold no more converse. They thought, indeed,
that he was muttering a charm for their destruction. Accau and Du Gay,
conscious of the danger, begged the friar to dispense with his devotions,
lest he and they alike should be tomahawked; but Hennepin says that his
sense of duty rose superior to his fears, and that he was resolved to
repeat his office at all hazards, though not until he had asked pardon of
his two friends for thus imperilling their lives. Fortunately, he
presently discovered a device by which his devotion and his prudence were
completely reconciled. He ceased the muttering which had alarmed the
Indians, and, with the breviary open on his knees, sang the service in
loud and cheerful tones. As this had no savor of sorcery, and as they now
imagined that the book was teaching its owner to sing for their amusement,
they conceived a favorable opinion of both alike.

These Sioux, it may be observed, were the ancestors of those who committed
the horrible but not unprovoked massacres of 1863, in the valley of the
St. Peter. Hennepin complains bitterly of their treatment of him, which,
however, seems to have been tolerably good. Afraid that he would lag
behind, as his canoe was heavy and slow, [Footnote: And yet it had, by his
account, made a distance of thirteen hundred and eighty miles from the
mouth of the Mississippi upward in twenty-four days.] they placed several
warriors in it, to aid him and his men in paddling. They kept on their way
from morning till night, building huts for their bivouac when it rained,
and sleeping on the open ground when the weather was fair, which, says
Hennepin, "gave us a good opportunity to contemplate the moon and stars."
The three Frenchmen took the precaution of sleeping at the side of the
young chief who had been the first to smoke the peacepipe, and who seemed
inclined to befriend them; but there was another chief, one Aquipaguetin,
a crafty old savage, who, having lost a son in war with the Miamis, was
angry that the party had abandoned their expedition, and thus deprived him
of his revenge. He therefore kept up a dismal lament through half the
night; while other old men, crouching over Hennepin as he lay trying to
sleep, stroked him with their hands, and uttered wailings so lugubrious
that he was forced to the belief that he had been doomed to death, and
that they were charitably bemoaning his fate. [Footnote: This weeping and
wailing over Hennepin once seemed to me an anomaly in his account of Sioux
manners, as I am not aware that such practices are to be found among them
at present. They are mentioned, however, by other early writers. Le Sueur,
who was among them in 1699-1700, was wept over no less than Hennepin. See
the abstract of his journal in La Harpe.]

One night, they were, for some reason, unable to bivouac near their
protector, and were forced to make their fire at the end of the camp. Here
they were soon beset by a crowd of Indians, who told them that
Aquipaguetin had at length resolved to tomahawk them. The malcontents
were gathered in a knot at a little distance, and Hennepin hastened to
appease them by another gift of knives and tobacco. This was but one of
the devices of the old chief to deprive them of their goods without
robbing them outright. He had with him the bones of a deceased relative,
which he was carrying home wrapped in skins prepared with smoke after the
Indian fashion, and gayly decorated with bands of dyed porcupine quills.
He would summon his warriors, and, placing these relics in the midst of
the assembly, call on all present to smoke in their honor; after which
Hennepin was required to offer a more substantial tribute in the shape of
cloth, beads, hatchets, tobacco, and the like, to be laid upon the bundle
of bones. The gifts thus acquired were then, in the name of the deceased,
distributed among the persons present.

On one occasion, Aquipaguetin killed a bear, and invited the chiefs and
warriors to feast upon it. They accordingly assembled on a prairie, west
of the river; and, the banquet over, they danced a "medicine-dance." They
were all painted from head to foot, with their hair oiled, garnished with
red and white feathers, and powdered with the down of birds. In this
guise, they set their arms akimbo, and fell to stamping with such fury
that the hard prairie was dented with the prints of their moccasons; while
the chief's son, crying at the top of his throat, gave to each in turn the
pipe of war. Meanwhile, the chief himself, singing in a loud and rueful
voice, placed his hands on the heads of the three Frenchmen, and from time
to time interrupted his music to utter a vehement harangue. Hennepin could
not understand the words, but his heart sank as the conviction grew strong
within him that these ceremonies tended to his destruction. It seems,
however, that, after all the chief's efforts, his party was in the
minority, the greater part being averse to either killing or robbing the
three strangers. Every morning, at daybreak, an old warrior shouted the
signal of departure; and the recumbent savages leaped up, manned their
birchen fleet, and plied their paddles against the current, often without
waiting to break their fast. Sometimes they stopped for a buffalo-hunt on
the neighboring prairies; and there was no lack of provisions. They passed
Lake Pepin, which Hennepin called the Lake of Tears, by reason of the
howlings and lamentations here uttered over him by Aquipaguetin; and,
nineteen days after his capture, landed near the site of St. Paul. The
father's sorrows now began in earnest. The Indians broke his canoe to
pieces, having first hidden their own among the alder-bushes. As they
belonged to different bands and different villages, their mutual jealousy
now overcame all their prudence, and each proceeded to claim his share of
the captives and the booty. Happily, they made an amicable distribution,
or it would have fared ill with the three Frenchmen; and each taking his
share, not forgetting the priestly vestments of Hennepin, the splendor of
which they could not sufficiently admire, they set out across the country
for their villages, which lay towards the north, in the neighborhood of
Lake Buade, now called Mille Lac.

Being, says Hennepin, exceedingly tall and active, they walked at a
prodigious speed, insomuch that no European could long keep pace with
them. Though the month of May had begun, there were frosts at night; and
the marshes and ponds were glazed with ice, which cut the missionary's
legs as he waded through. They swam the larger streams, and Hennepin
nearly perished with cold as be emerged from the icy current. His two
companions, who were smaller than he, and who could not swim, were carried
over on the backs of the Indians. They showed, however, no little
endurance; and he declares that he should have dropped by the way, but for
their support. Seeing him disposed to lag, the Indians, to spur him on,
set fire to the dry grass behind him, and then, taking him by the hands,
ran forward with him to escape the flames. To add to his misery, he was
nearly famished, as they gave him only a small piece of smoked meat, once
a day, though it does not appear that they themselves fared better. On the
fifth day, being by this time in extremity, he saw a crowd of squaws and
children approaching over the prairie, and presently descried the bark
lodges of an Indian town. The goal was reached. He was among the homes of
the Sioux.

CHAPTER XIX.
1680, 1681.
HENNEPIN AMONG THE SIOUX.

SIGNS OP DANGER.--ADOPTION.--HENNEPIN AND HIS INDIAN RELATIVES.--THE
HUNTING PARTY.--THE SIOUX CAMP.--FALLS OF ST. ANTHONY.--A VAGABOND
FRIAR.--HIS ADVENTURES ON THE MISSISSIPPI.--GREYSOLON DU LHUT.--RETURN
TO CIVILIZATION.

As Hennepin entered the village, he beheld a sight which caused him to
invoke St. Anthony of Padua. In front of the lodges were certain stakes,
to which were attached bundles of straw, intended, as he supposed, for
burning him and his friends alive. His concern was redoubled when he saw
the condition of the Picard Du Gay, whose hair and face had been painted
with divers colors, and whose head was decorated with a tuft of white
feathers. In this guise, he was entering the village, followed by a crowd
of Sioux, who compelled him to sing and keep time to his own music by
rattling a dried gourd containing a number of pebbles. The omens, indeed,
were exceedingly threatening; for treatment like this was usually followed
by the speedy immolation of the captive. Hennepin ascribes it to the
effect of his invocations, that, being led into one of the lodges, among a
throng of staring squaws and children, he and his companions were seated
on the ground, and presented with large dishes of birch bark, containing a
mess of wild rice boiled with dried whortleberries; a repast which he
declares to have been the best that had fallen to his lot since the day of
his captivity. [Footnote: The Sioux, or Dacotah, as they call themselves,
were a numerous people, separated into three great divisions, which were
again subdivided into bands. Those among whom Hennepin was a prisoner
belonged to the division known as the Issanti, Issanyati, or, as he writes
it, Issati, of which the principal band was the Meddewakantonwan. The
other great divisions, the Yanktons and the Tintonwans, or Tetons, lived
west of the Mississippi, extending beyond the Missouri, and ranging as far
as the Rocky Mountains. The Issanti cultivated the soil, but the extreme
western bands subsisted on the buffalo alone. The former had two kinds of
dwelling,--the _teepee_ or skin lodge, and the bark lodge. The teepee,
which was used by all the Sioux, consists of a covering of dressed buffalo
hide stretched on a conical stack of poles. The bark lodge was peculiar to
the eastern Sioux, and examples of it might be seen until within a few
years among the bands, on the St. Peter's. In its general character it was
like the Huron and Iroquois houses, but was inferior in construction. It
had a ridge roof framed of poles extending from the posts which formed the
sides, and the whole was covered with elm-bark. The lodges in the villages
to which Hennepin was conducted were probably of this kind.

The name Sioux is an abbreviation of _Nadouessioux_, an Ojibwa word
meaning _enemies_. The Ojibwas used it to designate this people, and
occasionally also the Iroquois, being at deadly war with both.

Rev. Stephen R. Riggs, for many years a missionary among the Issanti
Sioux, says that this division consists of four distinct bands. They ceded
all their lands east of the Mississippi to the United States in 1837, and
lived on the St. Peter's till driven thence in consequence of the
massacres of 1862, 1863. The Yankton Sioux consist of two bands, which are
again subdivided. The Assiniboins, or Hohays, are an offshoot from the
Yanktons, with whom they are now at war. The Titonwan or Teton Sioux,
forming the most western division, and the largest, comprise seven bands,
and are among the bravest and fiercest tenants of the prairie.

The earliest French writers estimate the total number of the Sioux at
forty thousand. Mr. Riggs, in 1852, placed it at about twenty-five
thousand. Lake many other Indian tribes, they seem practically incapable
of civilization.]

This soothed his fears: but, as he allayed his famished appetite, he
listened with anxious interest to the vehement jargon of the chiefs and
warriors, who were disputing among themselves to whom the three captives
should respectively belong; for it seems that, as far as related to them,
the question of distribution had not yet been definitely settled. The
debate ended in the assigning of Hennepin to his old enemy Aquipaguetin;
who, however, far from persisting in his evil designs, adopted him on the
spot as his son. The three companions must now part company. Du Gay, not
yet quite reassured of his safety, hastened to confess himself to
Hennepin, but Accau proved refractory and refused the offices of religion,
which did not prevent the friar from embracing them both, as he says, with
an extreme tenderness. Tired as he was, he was forced to set out with his
self-styled father to his village, which was fortunately not far off. An
unpleasant walk of a few miles through woods and marshes brought them to
the borders of a sheet of water, apparently Lake Buade, where five of
Aquipaguetin's wives received the party in three canoes, and ferried them
to an island on which the village stood.

At the entrance of the chief's lodge, Hennepin was met by a decrepit old
Indian, withered with age, who offered him the peace-pipe, and placed him
on a bear-skin which was spread by the fire. Here, to relieve his fatigue,
for he was well-nigh spent, a small boy anointed his limbs with the fat of
a wild cat, supposed to be sovereign in these cases by reason of the great
agility of that animal. His new father gave him a bark platter of fish,
covered him with a buffalo robe, and showed him six or seven of his wives,
who were thenceforth, he was told, to regard him as a son. The chief's
household was numerous; and his allies and relations formed a considerable
clan, of which the missionary found himself an involuntary member. He was
scandalized when he saw one of his adopted brothers carrying on his back
the bones of a deceased friend, wrapped in the chasuble of brocade which
they had taken with other vestments from his box.

Seeing their new relative so enfeebled that he could scarcely stand, the
Indians made for him one of their sweating baths, [Footnote: These baths
consist of a small hut, covered closely with buffalo-skins, into which the
patient and his friends enter, carefully closing every aperture. A pile of
heated stones is placed in the middle, and water is poured upon them,
raising a dense vapor. They are still, 1868, in use among the Sioux and
some other tribes.] where they immersed him in steam three times a week; a
process from, which he thinks he derived great benefit. His strength
gradually returned, in spite of his meagre fare; for there was a dearth of
food, and the squaws were less attentive to his wants than to those of
their children. They respected him, however, as a person endowed with
occult powers, and stood in no little awe of a pocket compass which he had
with him, as well as of a small metal pot with feet moulded after the face
of a lion. This last seemed in their eyes a "medicine" of the most
formidable nature, and they would not touch it without first wrapping it
in a beaver-skin. For the rest, Hennepin made himself useful in various
ways. He shaved the heads of the children, as was the custom of the tribe,
bled certain asthmatic persons, and dosed others with orvietan, the famous
panacea of his time, of which he had brought with him a good supply. With
respect to his missionary functions, he seems to have given himself little
trouble, unless his attempt to make a Sioux vocabulary is to be regarded
as preparatory to a future apostleship. "I could gain nothing over them,"
he says, "in the way of their salvation, by reason of their natural
stupidity." Nevertheless, on one occasion he baptized a sick child, naming
it Antoinette in honor of St. Anthony of Padua. It seemed to revive after
the rite, but soon relapsed and presently died, "which," he writes, "gave
me great joy and satisfaction." In this, he was like the Jesuits, who
could find nothing but consolation in the death of a newly baptized
infant, since it was thus assured of a paradise which, had it lived, it
would probably have forfeited by sharing in the superstitions of its
parents.

With respect to Hennepin and his Indian father, there seems to have been
little love on either side; but Ouasicoude, the principal chief of the
Sioux of this region, was the fast friend of the three white men. He was
angry that they had been robbed, which he had been unable to prevent, as
the Sioux had no laws, and their chiefs little power; but he spoke his
mind freely, and told Aquipaguetin and the rest, in full council, that
they were like a dog who steals a piece of meat from a dish, and runs away
with it. When Hennepin complained of hunger, the Indians had always
promised him that early in the summer he should go with them on a buffalo
hunt, and have food in abundance. The time at length came, and the
inhabitants of all the neighboring villages prepared for departure, To
each several band was assigned its special hunting-ground, and he was
expected to accompany his Indian father. To this he demurred; for he
feared lest Aquipaguetin, angry at the words of the great chief, might
take this opportunity to revenge the insult put upon him. He therefore
gave out that he expected a party of "spirits," that is to say, Frenchmen,
to meet him at the mouth of the Wisconsin, bringing a supply of goods for
the Indians; and he declares that La Salle had in fact promised to send
traders to that place. Be this as it may, the Indians believed him; and,
true or false, the assertion, as will be seen, answered the purpose for
which it was made. The Indians set out in a body to the number of two
hundred and fifty warriors, with their women and children. The three
Frenchmen, who, though in different villages, had occasionally met during
the two months of their captivity, were all of the party. They descended
Rum River, which forms the outlet of Mille Lac, and which is called the
St. Francis, by Hennepin. None of the Indians had offered to give him
passage; and, fearing lest he should be abandoned, he stood on the bank,
hailing the passing canoes and begging to be taken in. Accau and Du Gay
presently appeared, paddling a small canoe which the Indians had given
them; but they would not listen to the missionary's call, and Accau, who
had no love for him, cried out that he, had paddled him long enough
already. Two Indians, however, took pity on him, and brought him to the
place of encampment, where Du Gay tried, to excuse himself for his
conduct, but Accau was sullen and kept aloof.

After reaching the Mississippi, the whole party encamped together opposite
to the mouth of Rum River, pitching their tents of skin, or building their
bark huts, on the slope of a hill by the side of the water. It was a wild
scene, this camp of savages among whom as yet no traders had come and no
handiwork of civilization had found its way; the tall warriors, some
nearly naked, some wrapped in buffalo robes, and some in shirts of dressed
deerskin fringed with hair and embroidered with dyed porcupine quills,
war-clubs of stone in their hands, and quivers at their backs filled with
stone-headed arrows; the squaws, cutting smoke-dried meat with knives of
flint, and boiling it in rude earthen pots of their own making, driving
away, meanwhile, with shrill cries, the troops of lean dogs, who disputed
the meal with a crew of hungry children. The whole camp, indeed, was
threatened with, starvation. The three white men could get no food but
unripe berries, from the effects of which Hennepin thinks they might all
have died, but for timely doses of his orvietan.

Being tired of the Indians, he became anxious to set out for the Wisconsin
to find the party of Frenchmen, real or imaginary, who were to meet him at
that place. That he was permitted to do so was due to the influence of the
great chief Ouasicoude, who always befriended him, and who had soundly
berated his two companions for refusing him a seat in their canoe. Du Gay
wished to go with him; but Accau, who liked the Indian life as much as he
disliked Hennepin, preferred to remain with the hunters. A small birch
canoe was given to the two adventurers, together with an earthen pot; and
they had also between them a gun, a knife, and a robe of beaver-skin. Thus
equipped, they began their journey, and soon approached the Falls of St.
Anthony, so named by Hennepin in honor of the inevitable St. Anthony of
Padua. [Footnote: Hennepin's notice of the Falls of St. Anthony, though
brief, is sufficiently accurate. He says, in his first edition, that they
are forty or fifty feet high, but adds ten feet more in the edition of
1697. In 1821, according to Schoolcraft, the perpendicular fall measured
forty feet. Great changes, however, have taken place here and are still in
progress. The rock is a very soft, friable sandstone, overlaid by a
stratum of limestone; and it is crumbling with such rapidity under the
action of the water that the cataract will soon be little more than a
rapid. Other changes equally disastrous, in an artistic point of view, are
going on even more quickly. Beside the falls stands a city, which, by an
ingenious combination of the Greek and Sioux languages, has received the
name of Minneapolis, or City of the Waters, and which, in 1867, contained
ten thousand inhabitants, two national banks, and an opera-house, while
its rival city of St. Anthony, immediately opposite, boasted a gigantic
water-cure and a State university. In short, the great natural beauty of
the place is utterly spoiled.] As they were carrying their canoe by the
cataract, they saw five or six Indians, who had gone before, one of whom
had climbed into an oak-tree beside the principal fall, whence in a loud
and lamentable voice he was haranguing the spirit of the waters, as a
sacrifice to whom he had just hung a robe of beaver-skin among the
branches. [Footnote: Oanktayhee, the principal deity of the Sioux, was
supposed to live under these falls, though he manifested himself in the
form of a buffalo. It was he who created the earth, like the Algonquin
Manabozho, from mud brought to him in the paws of a musk-rat. Carver, in
1766, saw an Indian throw every thing he had about him into the cataract
as an offering to this deity.] Their attention was soon engrossed by
another object. Looking over the edge of the cliff which overhung the
river below the falls, Hennepin saw a snake, which, as he avers, was six
feet long, [Footnote: In the edition of 1683. In that of 1697 he has grown
to seven or eight feet. The bank-swallows still make their nests in these
cliffs, boring easily into the soft incohesive sandstone.] writhing upward
towards the holes of the swallows in the face of the precipice, in order
to devour their young. He pointed him out to Du Gay, and they pelted him
with stones, till he fell into the river, but not before his contortions
and the darting of his forked tongue had so affected the Picard's
imagination that he was haunted that night with a terrific incubus.

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