"I was not sorry," Father Hennepin writes, "in this conjuncture, to continue our discovery with this people."
CHAPTER VII.
Life with the Savages.
Ascending the River with the Savages. Religious Worship. Abundance of Game. Hardihood of the Savages. The War-Whoop. Savage Revelry. The Falls of St. Anthony. Wild Country Beyond. Sufferings of the Captives. Capricious Treatment. Triumphal Entrance. The Adoption. Habits of the Savages.
Father Hennepin and his two companions reëmbarked in their canoe, and, oppressed with varied feelings of anxiety and curiosity, recommenced their journey up the river. The thirty large canoes, filled with their captors, surrounded them. The current was rapid; the savages were seldom in a hurry, and their progress was slow. At night they always landed and slept in the open air, unless it was stormy, when they would sometimes construct for themselves a frail shelter.
The devout ecclesiastic felt in duty bound daily to say his office, as it was called, in accordance with the rules of the Catholic Church. He had his breviary, composed of matins, lauds, vespers, and compline, or last prayer at night. These exercises he scrupulously performed. The superstitious Indians, seeing him open his book, and move his lips, imagined that he was practising some sort of incantation against them. Angrily they cried out against it, exclaiming, in their own language, "witchcraft."
Michael Ako, who had no ambition to receive a martyr's crown, entreated him, if he must say his prayers, to say them in secret. "If you persist in this course," said he, "you will so provoke the Indians, that we shall all be inevitably killed." Auguelle, who was more religiously inclined, joined in these entreaties, begging him to retire apart, morning and evening, into the forest for his devotions.
But the suspicions of the Indians were aroused. They had a great dread of diabolical influences. Whenever he entered the woods a party followed him. He could get no chance to pray out of their sight. At length he said to his companions:
"I cannot dispense with my prayers, whatever may be the consequences. If we are all massacred, I shall be the innocent cause of your death, as well as of my own."