“How beautiful is the sun, O Frenchmen, when thou comest to visit us! All our village awaits thee and thou shalt enter all our lodges in peace.”
Within the lodge were many of the tribe, and in their minds was great wonder as they looked upon the curious men from the East. The elders of the tribe again gave to the visitors the pipe of peace; and when they had smoked, the Indians also drew upon the calumet, thus binding upon themselves peace and good will to their strange guests.
A little way off was a group of lodges where lived the greatest chief of the tribe. When he heard of the coming of the white men, he sent to invite them to his lodge. The strangers accepted, and a great retinue attended them as they passed through the village. Eager to see such unusual visitors, the Indians followed them in throngs. Some lay in the grass and watched them as they passed by; others ran ahead, and then walked back to meet them. Yet without noise and with great courtesy they looked upon the two white men. Finally they all came to the lodge of the Peoria chief.
The chief stood in his doorway, while on either side of him stood an old man. Naked were the three, and up toward the sun they held the long-stemmed calumet. With a few dignified words the chief drew the white men into his lodge, where again they smoked together in friendship. Then silence fell upon those within the lodge, for the time had come when the strangers should tell of their mission. Impassive but full of expectancy, the Indians waited. It was the man in the black gown who spoke; and after the manner of the Indians he gave them four presents and with each present he gave them a message.
Silently the red men listened as with his first present he told them of the object of his coming. He was Jacques Marquette, a priest of the Order of Jesuits, and his companion was Louis Joliet, a fur trader and explorer of the great French nation. They had come journeying peaceably to visit the tribes that dwelt upon the Mississippi, and they were eager to go as far as the sea into which the Great River flowed.
Again he gave them a present and told them of the God of the white men, who had created the Indian as well, and who had sent the black-robed priests into the far corners of the earth to tell the Indians of his glory. Then a third present he gave to the Peorias and told them of the great chief of the French who sent word that he had conquered the fierce Iroquois and made peace everywhere. With the fourth and last present he begged the Peorias to tell him of the Indian nations to the south along the windings of the great river and beside the sea into which it flowed.
When the priest ceased speaking, the chief of the Peorias rose. Beside him stood an Indian boy of about ten years. He was not a Peoria, but the captive who had been taken in battle and adopted into the chief’s family. Placing his hand on the boy’s head, the chief spoke these words:—
“I thank thee, Black Gown, and thee, O Frenchman, for having taken so much trouble to come to visit us. Never has the earth been so beautiful or the sun so bright as to-day. Never has our river been so calm or so free from rocks, which thy canoes have removed in passing. Never has our tobacco tasted so good or our corn appeared so fine as we now see it. Here is my son whom I give thee to show thee my heart.”
Thus the captive Indian lad came to be one of the party of explorers and to share their strange wanderings and adventures in the Great Valley.
As the priest spoke of the God of the French who had sent his men across seas and into forests, the Indian chief, and those who sat with him, thought of their own manitous and gods, and of their own medicine men who understood and knew the powerful spirits, and by prayers and incantations could influence them to bring sunshine to ripen the corn and rain in time of drought, to guard them in warfare, and to cure them in sickness. This black-robed priest must be a great medicine man in the lodges of the whites; and so the chief said:—