By the third gift they were informed that the chief of the French had spread peace and overcome the Iroquois. And the last begged for all the information they could give about the sea and intervening nations.
When Marquette sat down, the chief stood up and laid his hand on the head of a little slave, prisoner from another tribe.
"I thank you, Blackgown," he said, "and you, Frenchman, for taking so much pains to come and visit us. The earth has never been so beautiful, nor the sun so bright, as to-day; never has the river been so calm and free from rocks, which your canoes removed as they passed! Never has our tobacco had so fine a flavor, nor our corn appeared so beautiful as we find it to-day. Here is my son. I give him to you that you may know my heart. Take pity on us and all our nation. You know the Great Spirit who made all: you speak to him and hear him; ask him to give us life and health and come and dwell with us."
When the chief had presented his guests with the Indian boy, and again offered the calumet, he urged them, with belts and garters of buffalo wool, brilliantly dyed, to go no farther down the great river, on account of dangers. These compliments being ended, a feast was brought in four courses. First came a wooden dish of sagamity or corn-meal boiled in water and grease. The chief took a buffalo-horn spoon and fed his guests as if they had been little children; three or four spoonfuls he put in Marquette's mouth and three or four spoonfuls in Jolliet's. Three fish were brought next, and he picked out the bones with his own fingers, blew on the food to cool it, and stuffed the explorers with all he could make them accept. It was their part to open their mouths as young birds do. The third course was that most delicate of Indian dishes, a fine dog; but seeing that his guests shrank from this, the chief ended the meal with buffalo meat, giving them the fattest parts.
The Illinois were at that time on the west side of the Mississippi, because they had been driven from their own country on the Illinois River by the Iroquois. The Illinois nation was made up of several united tribes: Kaskaskias, Peorias, Kahokias, Tamaroas, and Moingona. Flight scattered them, and these were only a few of their villages. They afterwards returned to their own land. Their chief wore a scarf or belt of fur crossing his left shoulder, encircling his waist and hanging in fringe. Arm and leg bands ornamented him, and he also had knee rattles of deer hoofs. Paint made of colored clays streaked his face. This attractive creature sent the Indian crier around, beating a drum of deer hide stretched over a pot, to proclaim the calumet dance in honor of the explorers.
Marquette and Jolliet were led out in the prairie to a small grove which sheltered the assembly from the afternoon sun. Even the women left their maize fields and the beans, melons, and squashes that they were cultivating, and old squaws dropped rush braiding, and with papooses swarming about their knees, followed. The Illinois were nimble, well-formed people, skillful with bow and arrow. They had, moreover, some guns among them, obtained from allies who had roved and traded with the French. Young braves imitated the gravity of their elders at this important ceremony. The Illinois never ate new fruits or bathed at the beginning of summer, without first dancing the calumet.
A large gay mat of rushes was spread in the center of the grove, and the warrior selected to dance put his god, or manitou—some tiny carven image which he carried around his person and to which he prayed—on the mat beside a beautiful calumet. Around them he spread his bow and arrows, his war club, and stone hatchet. The pipe was made of red rock like brilliantly polished marble, hollowed to hold tobacco. A stick two feet long, as thick as a cane, formed the stem. For the dance these pipes were often decked with gorgeous scarlet, green, and iridescent feathers, though white plumes alone made them the symbol of peace, and red quills bristled over them for war.
