“The Miamis! The Miamis! Where are they?” cried the Sioux in words which even Ako, the man learned in Indian tongues, did not understand at first. At length he caught their meaning; and with a paddle he drew on the sand a diagram to show that the Miamis had moved over to the land of the Illinois and were out of reach of the Sioux warriors. This was bitter news to the war party. Three or four of the old men laid their hands upon the heads of the white men and burst into weeping and lamentations. Then with loud cries they leaped into their canoes, forced their captives to take up their paddles, and crossed the river to another landing-place. Here they held a council as to what they should do with the prisoners.
The Sioux party decided to give up their expedition against the Miamis, but the disappointed Aquipaguetin seemed bent upon the killing of the whites. Two of the chiefs went to inform the captives by signs that they were to be tomahawked. The white men replied by heaping axes, knives, and tobacco at the feet of the crafty leader of the Indians, and, satisfied with the ransom, he said no more for a while of slaughter.
That night the Indians gave back to the white men their calumet, still unsmoked. The captives divided the hours into three watches lest they be massacred in their sleep. Hennepin was resolved to let himself be killed without resistance, all for the glory of his faith; but Ako and the Picard slept with their weapons close to their hands.
CHAPTER XVI
THE LAND OF THE SIOUX
When morning came, Narrhetoba, one of the chiefs of the Sioux, appeared before the white men, asked for their calumet, filled it with his own tobacco, and smoked it in their presence. Henceforth he was their friend, despite the wiles of the old chief Aquipaguetin. Taking to their canoes that day, the party with the three white captives paddled upstream toward the home of the Sioux.
Each day at dawn an old man roused the braves with a cry, and before taking up the day’s paddling they scoured the neighborhood for enemies. For nearly three weeks they were on the way before they drew near to the Falls of St. Anthony. Time and again the old chief, mourning over his son’s unavenged death, threatened to kill the whites; then with covetous fingers he would gather up the gifts with which he made them buy their lives. Carrying with him constantly the bones of a dead friend, wrapped in skins decorated with the quills of porcupines, he would often lay this bundle before the captives and demand that they cover the bones with presents in honor of the dead.
As they journeyed the old chief would at times break out into a fierce temper and vow the destruction of the three strangers. But on such occasions he would be restrained by the other chiefs, who realized that if they killed these white men no more traders would come to the Sioux country bringing merchandise and guns—which they spoke of as “the iron possessed by an evil spirit.”
The Sioux watched the curious ways of Friar Hennepin, and when they saw him looking upon an open book and moving his lips in muttered words they were almost on the point of killing him—for surely he was a sorcerer conversing under his breath with an evil spirit that might be persuaded any moment to kill them all. Ako and the Picard, seeing the effect of the friar’s devotions, urged him to leave off such dangerous practices. But the stubborn Hennepin, instead of muttering his holy offices, now fell to singing from the book in a loud and cheerful voice, much to the relief of the Indians who feared this far less than the mumbled undertones.
At last they left the river not far from the Falls of St. Anthony and hurried away northward toward the villages that lay in the region of the broad Mille Lac, the long-limbed Sioux covering the ground with great speed. They waded streams covered by a coat of ice from the frost of the night before. Neither Ako nor the Picard could swim, and so they often passed over on the backs of the Sioux. Hennepin was not built for speed, and the Indians, impatient at his slow progress, set fire to the prairie behind him and then, taking his hands, hurried the frightened man of prayer ahead of the licking flames. When they came to the first village the war party finally separated, each Sioux going to his own home town.