The Man with the Iron Hand

by John Carl Parish

Through all these years the Indian women whispered their fears among themselves in the lodges; and the men, as they chipped their stone arrowheads or shaped their strong bows, prayed to their manitous that if the Iroquois should come, the stone tips might fly straight and sure, lest their lodges be burned and the naked, howling men of the East carry torture and death among their women and children.

The Iroquois did come. It was in the year 1678 that war parties of these fierce tribes descended upon the valley of the Illinois. Out on the wooded plains the allied tribes advanced to meet them; while the women and children and the old men of the villages waited in dread and fear till runners came breathless to tell them of the repulse of the hated foe. This time the villages were saved, but fear did not die out with the victory. The valley lay like an ancient stronghold whose defenders had fought the besiegers away from the walls, yet slept on their arms in constant dread of a still more deadly attack.

In this same year of 1678, Allouez, another black-robed priest, came to settle among the Indians of the Kaskaskia village. He had come out to them for a few weeks in the spring of the year before, when eight of the tribes of the Illinois Nation were gathered at the village of the Kaskaskias that they might be in constant readiness to repel invasions of the Iroquois. Now the priest had come to stay, to baptize their children, and to teach them more about the strange manitou of whom Marquette had first told them. A huge cross, twenty-five feet high, had been erected in the middle of the town, and the Indians listened respectfully while he chanted the mass and preached to them.

The winter with its long hunting season went by; the river froze over and thawed out again; the time of planting came once more; and the children again played in the sun through the long hours of summer. So events moved on toward the strange happenings of the winter that followed. In the Kaskaskia village the women and girls had gathered the harvest of Indian corn and had stowed it away in caches or pits dug in the ground, lined with rushes and twigs and covered over for the long winter. It was a precious store, for it must provide corn for the spring sowing and food until the next harvest came around again. Then as the leaves dropped one by one from the trees along the river and the colder winds came, the whole village went off for the winter hunt.

It was the night before Christmas in 1679, and Allouez, the black-robed priest, still lingered in the Kaskaskia village, thinking, more than likely, of Christmas Eve in his beloved France far across the ocean, where amid the lights of a hundred candles priests were conducting midnight mass. Or perchance he thought of the high rock of Quebec where a frontier settlement held frowning watch above the river. Even it was hundreds of leagues nearer civilization than he.

But hark! There was a sound that brought the priest out of his reveries and back to the forest and rocks along the snow-skirted river of the wilderness. Out of the darkness came a group of Indians—young braves from some wandering bands of Miamis and Mascoutins. Well did Allouez know these tribes, for he had lived with them years before in their village near the portage of the Fox River. Strange and exciting was the news which they brought him this night. Alarm deepened on the priest’s face as he gathered his few belongings and made his way across the snow and through the woods to the village of the Miamis and Mascoutins.

The village of the Kaskaskias, on the north shore of the Illinois, now lay silent and deserted. The lonely lodges and the well-filled caches alone gave evidence that the Indians would return. Many leagues down the river was the village of the Peorias. Here, too, the young men were off on the winter hunt; but the older men and the women and children were still at the village. With them was Nicanopé, brother of Chassagoac, and many others of the Kaskaskia tribe.

Not a hint of the message that brought such alarm to Allouez at the upper village had come to the Peorias. Aside from the ever-present dread of the Iroquois, that lurked in each Indian’s mind, they lived as peacefully as the hardships of winter would permit. Smoke from their lodges rose up into the wintry sky, or veered off to the south and east when the blasts of wind swept across the plains. The river was open, and by the bank on either side lay pirogues—heavy canoes fifty feet long and big enough to hold more than a score of men.

Less than two weeks had passed since Allouez had fled from the upper village. The sun had been up an hour or more, and the Peoria village was bustling with life. Warriors and old men stalked here and there in their winter garments of buffalo hide, or sat smoking and gazing placidly upon river and sky. The ever busy women sat weaving rush mats or bestirred themselves in gathering wood. Children played about in the open, and on the sunny side of the lodges zealous mothers had already set up on end the brown papooses bound like little mummies in the cradles.

Then, stirring the village as an arrow startles a covey of birds, came the wild cry, “The Iroquois.” From behind a jutting point up the river swept a long line of canoes. Indescribable confusion followed. On both sides of the river men sprang for their bows and arrows; while women, hardly pausing to seize their babes, scuttled away between the lodges and on to the friendly woods back on the hill. With them went the young girls and children, fleeing like scared rabbits.