"Settlers shall crowd to your feet and towns rise around you."
He was thinking of the hamlets of Picardy or perhaps of something like the metropolis of Amiens. Of such a capital as St. Paul or a city like Minneapolis he had no idea.
"Old World gold shall be poured into your sacrificial basin."
One page of statistics showing the annual income of the modern mills would have read to him, as it does to many others, like a page from the log of a Spanish treasure ship. Anthony exaggerated the power of the falls and the prosperity of the country to the limit of his imagination. That they would finally both be greater than his prophesy no sane man of his time would have dared to say.
His oration was having a fine effect upon the listening Indians. He could see that from the corner of his eye. He was sure they would not dare to harm him now. Although they might not understand his words, the all-knowing manitou could, of course, and that was enough for them. As he stepped out to join them his last words, impossible as they seemed, were of practical business worth and part of them are still official:
"Then, O idle manitou, when you are worn down and flattened by the toil of serving the race which tamed you, men shall forget your youthful beauty and your sacred title, a prosaic commercial nation shall know you only by that name with which I now take possession of you in the name of France—all persons here present as consenting witnesses. You, as a busy miller, shall be called for me and for my patron saint the Falls of St. Anthony!"
Whether the explorers had done a good day's work in discovering the wheat lands and the water to develop them, let the farmers and the millers and the cities of Minnesota say.
Any one who noticed the gaily feathered foster-fathers and their equally decorated sons as they trotted homeward toward the tepees, outlined in every detail of feature and costume against the red northern sunset, single file, toeing in, stone clubs dangling, could be certain that a feast was in preparation and that he saw six satisfied Sioux.