"How bright is the sun when you come to see us, O Frenchmen! Our lodges are all open to you."
The visitors were then seated in the wigwam, and the pipe, or calumet, offered them to smoke, all the Indians crowding around and saying:
"You do well to visit us, brothers."
Obliged to observe this peace ceremony, Marquette put the pipe to his lips, but Jolliet, used to the tobacco weed, puffed with a good will.
The entire village then formed a straggling procession, gazing at the Frenchmen, whom they guided farther to the chief's town. He also met them standing with a naked retinue at his door, and the calumet was again smoked.
The Illinois lodges were shaped like the rounded cover of an emigrant wagon, high, and very long, having an opening left along the top for the escape of smoke. They were made of rush mats, which the women wove, overlapped as shingles on a framework of poles. Rush mats also carpeted the ground, except where fires burned in a row along the middle. Each fire was used by two families who lived opposite, in stalls made of blankets. The ends of the lodge had flaps to shut out the weather, but these were left wide open to the summer sun. During visits of ceremony a guest stood where he could be seen and heard by all who could crowd into the wigwam. But when the Illinois held important councils they made a circular inclosure, and built a camp-fire in the center. Many families and many fires filled a long wigwam, though Jolliet and Marquette were lodged with the chief, who had one for himself and his household.
Whitening embers were sending threads of smoke towards a strip of blue sky overhead when the missionary stood up to explain his errand in the crowded inclosure, dividing his talk into four parts with presents. By the first gift of cloth and beads he told his listeners that the Frenchmen were voyaging in peace to visit nations on the river. By the second he said:
"I declare to you that God, your Creator, has pity on you, since, when you have been so long ignorant of him, he wishes to become known to you. I am sent on his behalf with this design. It is for you to acknowledge and obey him."