The Man with the Iron Hand

by John Carl Parish

Meantime the current of the river bore the canoes down to the village. They turned to the left, and a tall figure leaped from the nearest canoe to the bank and then stood quietly watching the confusion of the villagers. Some of the warriors fled to the woods with the women. Others with eager weapons were about to attack the newcomers, when a cry from one of their chiefs on the other shore made them pause. He had seen that, although the men from the canoes, armed with guns and ready for war, could have shot down a dozen Illinois in their first confused scramble for weapons, they had not fired a single shot. These men were evidently not Iroquois, but Frenchmen who seemed bent on peace rather than battle.

Quickly the calumet was raised by the reassured Peorias, and another was offered by the French. The canoes were drawn up to the bank, and together the white men and the villagers went to the lodges. Old men reappeared from the woods and women came out of their hiding-places. Children with wary eyes looked up into the faces of three friars, Fathers of the Recollet Order with gray robes and pointed cowls, who took them by the hand and poured out friendly but unintelligible words.

In the lodges the warriors and chiefs—now that the fear of an Iroquois attack had subsided—welcomed the visitors with every sign of good will. They rubbed their feet with bear’s oil and the fat of buffalo and fed them with the best the village had to offer. Then they sat down for a council of peace, ready to hear the message of the white men. Chassagoac was away on the hunt, and so his brother Nicanopé was the highest in rank of the Indian chiefs who were present.

There were bold men among the French in this council; and the Indians gazed with kindling eyes upon the tall figure of the white chief who had first leaped from his canoe, and upon the dark face of another man who seemed to be next in command. This second man had sat in the canoe at the farther end of the line that had swept down to the village. He was among the last to come ashore; but something unusual and strangely awkward about his movements caught the quick attention of the Indians. In the council, however, their eyes turned from the swarthy, black-haired lieutenant to the tall white leader as he rose to speak.

Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, was a man still under middle age, but an indomitable will and a restless and unceasing activity had already crowded his years with the experiences of an ordinary lifetime. No Indian could look upon his cold, finely chiseled features and unflinching eyes without feeling the relentless force of the man. They listened with quiet attention to his words.

He offered them a present of Martinique tobacco and some hatchets, saying that first of all he wished to tell them of a thing he had done and explain it to them. A few days before he and his men had come to the village of their brother tribe, the Kaskaskias, many leagues up the river. The village was empty where they had hoped to find friendly Indians with food. Unable to kill game, they were in danger of starvation. They well knew how precious was the corn hidden in the caches of the deserted town, but in their extremity they had borrowed some; and now they wished to pay for it in presents or to return it to the Peorias if the Indians could not spare it. At the same time he added that if they could not let him have food for his men, he would go down the river to their neighbors, the Osages, and there set up the forge which he had brought to mend their knives and hatchets and make them new tools for the warpath and the chase.

Behind the impassive faces of Nicanopé, Omawha, and other chiefs were minds alive to a new situation. This man was not a mere black robe, come among them to preach and to baptize their dying; nor was he a lone trader, a coureur de bois passing by in his bold profession of trapping, hunting, and trading furs. Here was a great chief with men at his back, a warrior with fire-spitting guns, a trader with canoes full of hatchets and knives and tobacco and a forge to keep their weapons in order and to make them new ones. Surely he was a great and powerful man who had come into their country this cold winter day, and well would it be for the tribes of the Illinois if he stayed among them.

But what is this he is saying? He speaks of the Iroquois. They, too, are subjects of the King of the French. Yet if the bold Iroquois should fall upon them, La Salle and his followers would be with the Illinois, would give them guns, and would help them protect their villages from the onslaughts of the Five Nations. Only they must let him build a fort near their village for the protection of his men. He wished, also, to build a great canoe, big enough to hold all his men and goods, and by means of it to travel down the Illinois to the Mississippi and thence on its broad current to where it emptied into the Gulf of Mexico—so that he might bring back more hatchets and presents.

The Indians were overjoyed. Many of the Kaskaskias were present, and among them was Nicanopé, one of their chiefs. They told La Salle to keep the corn he had taken at the upper village, and begged him to stay among them and set up his forge and build his fort. If he wished to descend the river that flowed through the length of the Great Valley, he would find it an easy waterway and the country through which it flowed a land of beauty and plenty.

Finally the conference broke up and the Indians retired to their own lodges in great happiness of mind. Among them none was happier than Chief Omawha, for La Salle had shown him special favor and had given him two hatchets and a number of knives.