Determined not to give up his friend, he rose next morning and helped the men hide their heavy freight in the rocks, leaving two of them to hide with and guard it, and went on down the Illinois River. On one bank the retreat of the invaded tribe could be traced, and on the other the dead camp-fires of the Iroquois who had followed them. But of Tonty and his Frenchmen there was still no sign.
La Salle saw the ruins of Fort Crèvecœur and his deserted vessel. And so searching he came to the mouth of the Illinois and saw for the first time that river of his ambitions, the Mississippi. There he turned back, leaving a letter tied to a tree, on the chance of its sometime falling into the hands of Tonty. There was nothing to do but to take his men and goods from among the rocks near the destroyed town and return to Fort Miamis, on the St. Joseph, which some of his followers had rebuilt. The winter was upon them.
La Salle never sat and brooded over trouble. He was a man of action. Shut in with his men and goods, and obliged to wait until spring permitted him to take the next step, he began at once to work on Indian hunters, and to draw their tribes towards forming a settlement around the rock he meant to fortify on the Illinois. Had he been able to attach turbulent voyageurs to him as he attached native tribes, his heroic life would have ended in success even beyond his dreams. Tonty could better deal with ignorant men, his military training standing him in good stead; yet Tonty dared scarcely trust a voyageur out of his sight.
While Tonty and La Salle were passing through these adventures, the Récollet father, Louis Hennepin, and his two companions, sent by La Salle, explored the upper Mississippi. One of these was named Michael Ako; the other, Du Gay, a man from Picardy in France.
They left Fort Crèvecœur on the last day of February, twenty-four hours before La Salle started northward, and entered the Mississippi on the 12th of March. The great food-stocked stream afforded them plenty of game, wild turkeys, buffaloes, deer, and fish. The adventurers excused themselves from observing the Lenten season set apart by the Church for fasting; but Father Hennepin said prayers several times a day. He was a great robust Fleming, with almost as much endurance as that hardy Norman, La Salle.
They had paddled about a month up river through the region where Marquette and Jolliet had descended, when one afternoon they stopped to repair their canoe and cook a wild turkey. Hennepin, with his sleeves rolled back, was daubing the canoe with pitch, and the others were busy at the fire, when a war whoop, followed by continuous yelling, echoed from forest to forest, and a hundred and twenty naked Sioux or Dacotah Indians sprang out of boats to seize them. It was no use for Father Hennepin to show a peace-pipe or offer fine tobacco. The Frenchmen were prisoners. And when these savages learned by questioning with signs, and by drawing on the sand with a stick, that the Miamis, whom they were pursuing to fight, were far eastward out of their reach, three or four old warriors laid their hands on Hennepin's shaven crown and began to cry and howl like little boys.
The friar in his long gray capote or hooded garment, which fell to his feet, girt about the waist by a rope called the cord of St. Francis, stood, with bare toes showing on his sandals, inclining his fat head with sympathy. He took out his handkerchief and wiped the old men's faces. Du Gay and Ako, in spite of the peril, laughed to see him daub the war paint.
"The good father hath no suspicion that these old wretches are dooming him to death," said Ako to Du Gay.