Then he went on to tell the astounded Indians of all the windings of the Mississippi, of the smooth current upon which a canoe might ride to its mouth. He described each river that entered it from the east and from the west, and named each tribe that dwelt on its borders. Nowhere was there fall or rapids to obstruct one’s way, and only where the river broadened out at the mouth were there shallows and sand and mud-bars. Each twist and turn, each rocky cliff and entering stream he seemed to know as if he had spent months in paddling up and down the river in an Indian pirogue.
The bear meat was forgotten. The Indians sat silent, their hands clapped to their mouths in amazement. What great power or “medicine” did this man possess that enabled him to watch what occurred in secret nightly councils, and to see and describe hundreds of leagues of the course and valley of the Great River he had never visited? Like children caught in mischief, they confessed that all he said was true and that they had deceived him only to keep him in their midst.
La Salle departed from the lodge, leaving them with troubled minds. How strange and wonderful were these men of fair faces and flowing hair. And what did their presence bode for the Indian? Were they their friends, or were they at heart friends of the Iroquois? Who knew how near to their villages were bands of painted warriors of the Five Nations? Yet, though suspicion lay heavy upon their hearts, they looked with covetous eyes upon the hatchets and knives, the kettles and weapons that the white men brought.
CHAPTER IX
THE WHITE INVASION
Not a day passed but the Illinois followed with inquisitive eyes the movements of the men at the fort. They watched the great white beams by the river bank as the Frenchmen laid them out and fastened them together till the growing ship began to look like the white skeleton of an immense buffalo lying bleached and bare to the four winds of heaven.
Omawha, the friendly chief, adopted as a son the short young friar of La Salle’s party; and so the gray robe of Father Membré passed freely in and out of the lodges of the village. Like one of the chief’s family, he ate of the Indian fare and slept on buffalo robes beside smouldering lodge-fires. His fellow-whites were at the new fort; and he alone watched the coming of spring in the Indian town.
As winter began to break up, the hunting parties came home. The war party from the South brought captives with them, and the village became more populous. But Chassagoac, the indefatigable hunter, was still off in the woods.
Even in the long stretches of the Indian country, winterlocked and drear, news traveled fast; and the Illinois well knew that runners were carrying all up and down the Great Valley tales of the white men among the Peorias, of the fort on the hill, and of the ship that was to sail down the long river. It was, therefore, with concern that the Peorias saw one day a gathering of Indians encamped about the fort. They were Osages and Chickasaws and Arkansas—tribes that lived along the Mississippi far to the south. And the villagers knew that they—jealous of the advantages of the Illinois—would tell the white chief of the easy navigation of the river and urge him to come down and live in their country.
Not many days passed before another group of Indians arrived, this time from the Far West—so far beyond the Mississippi River that they told of long-haired Spaniards who rode to war on horses and fought with lances. One of the Indians proudly wore at his belt a tobacco pouch made from the hoof of a horse with some of the skin of the leg attached. A week later came still another delegation to see the far-famed whites. They were Sioux from the distant Northwest, in the land where the Mississippi took its rise; and they were long-time foes of the tribes of the Illinois.