The pole had bunches of flowers tied here and there, and long streamers that it was fun to jerk from some one's hand and let the wind blow them away. Girls and youths did this to rivals, with mischievous laughter.
The habitans were in their holiday garb, which had hardly changed for two hundred years except when it was put by for winter furs, clean blue tunics, scarlet caps and sashes, deerskin breeches trimmed with yellow or brown fringe, sometimes both, leggings and moccasins with bead embroidery and brightly dyed threads.
There were shopkeepers, too, there were boatmen and Indians, and some of the quality with their wives in satin and lace and gay brocades. Soldiers as well in their military gear, and officers in buff and blue with cocked hats and pompons.
The French girls had put on their holiday attire and some had festooned a light skirt over one of cloth and placed in it a bright bow. Gowns that were family heirlooms, never seeing day except on some festive occasion, strings of beads, belts studded with wampum shells, high-heeled shoes with a great buckle or bow, but not as easy to dance in as moccasins.
Two years had brought more changes to the individual, or rather the younger part of the community, than to the town. A few new houses had been built, many old ones repaired and enlarged a little. The streets were still narrow and many of them winding about. The greatest signs of life were at the river's edge. The newer American emigrant came for land and secured it outside. Every week some of the better class English who were not in the fur trade went to Quebec or Montreal to be under their own rulers.
There was not an entire feeling of security. Since Pontiac there had been no great Indian leader, but many subordinate chiefs who were very sore over the treaties. There was an Indian prophet, twin brother to the chief Tecumseh who afterward led his people to a bloody war, who used his rude eloquence to unite the warring tribes in one nation by wild visions he foresaw of their greatness.
Marauding tribes still harassed parties of travelers, but about Detroit they were peaceable; and many joined in the festivities of a day like this. While as farm laborers they were of little worth, they were often useful at the wharves, and as boatmen.
Two years had brought a strange, new life to Jeanne, so imperceptibly that she was now a puzzle to herself. The child had disappeared, the growing girl she hardly knew. The wild feats that had once been the admiration of the children pleased her no longer. The children had grown as well. The boys tilled the fields with their fathers, worked in shops or on the docks, or were employed about the Fort. Some few, smitten with military ardor, were in training for future soldiers. The field for girls had grown wider. Beside the household employments there were spinning and sewing. The Indian women had made a coarse kind of lace worked with beads that the French maidens improved upon and disposed of to the better class. Or the more hoydenish ones delighted to work in the fields with their brothers, enjoying the outdoor life.
For a year Jeanne had kept on with her master, though at spring a wild impulse of liberty threatened to sweep her from her moorings.
"Why do I feel so?" she inquired almost fiercely of the master. "Something stifles me! Then I wish I had been made a bird to fly up and up until I had left the earth. Oh, what glorious thing is in the bird's mind when he can look into the very heavens, soaring out of sight?"