These Indians who had never before seen a white man, listened to him with reverence. A chapel soon sprung up there, and the services were chanted in a new tongue. At this mission of St. Esprit, more than twenty different nations listened to the teacher. Hither came scattered remnants of the Hurons and Ottawas; hither came the Potawatamies, worshippers of the sun, who invited Allouez to their homes still further westward; hither came the Sacs and Foxes, hunters of the deer, the beaver and the buffalo; hither came the Illinois and the impassive Sioux, whose food was wild rice, and who used skins of beasts instead of bark to roof their cabins, and who excited the missionary’s curiosity by the accounts they gave of the mighty Mesipi, on which they dwelt, and which flowed to the south; forests they had not, but vast prairies where herds of deer and buffalo grazed on the tall grasses. “They told him of their mysterious peace-pipe, and of the welcome which they gave to strangers;” and Allouez, as he listened, exclaimed, “Their country is the best field for the gospel.”
After a residence here of two years, Allouez returned to Quebec, and there exciting an enthusiasm equal to his own, he, already on the third day after his return, in company with Louis Nicolas, another missionary, was on his way back to Chegoimegon.
CHAPTER XXIII.
NEW FRANCE (continued). DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
The zeal of the Jesuit missionaries received a fresh stimulant, not only from the opening of this new field of labour, but from the introduction by Talon of a number of Franciscan friars, who thus broke up the Jesuit monopoly, and gave rise to a spirit of rival piety. No time was lost in occupying the ground made known by Allouez. Claude Dablon and James Marquette soon followed him, and the mission of St. Mary’s, on the falls between the Lakes Superior and Huron, was established.
“The peninsula between Lake Superior and Green Bay was soon explored. Milwaukie, Chicago and St. Joseph’s were visited, and missions planted among the tribes on Lake Michigan.” For several years this indefatigable triumvirate of missionaries laboured at the work of christianising the Indian and exploring the country. The design of navigating “the Great River,” of which they continued to hear reports, originated with Marquette in 1669, and the interval which occurred between that time and its accomplishment was employed by him in acquiring some knowledge of the Illinois language.
At length Talon, seconding Colbert’s views of extending the empire of France and the sphere of Jesuit missions, deputed Marquette to the welcome business of exploration. Before he set out, however, he had collected the scattered remains of one branch of the Hurons at the Point of St. Ignatius, on the northern shore of the peninsula of Michigan, where a chapel was built and a mission established. This settlement was long maintained “as a key to the west, and a convenient rendezvous of the remote Algonquins, to whom the French gave protection; and Marquette thus gained a place also as one of the founders of Michigan.”[[10]]
While Marquette was thus occupied, Allouez and Dablon explored Eastern Wisconsin and the north of Illinois, preaching the religion of the cross among the Mascoutins, Kickapoos and Miamis. Allouez alone extended his pilgrimage among the tribes of the Fox Indians who inhabit the region around the river of that name.
The Potawatomies, among whom Marquette dwelt, heard with amaze of his intended exploration of the “Great River,” or the “Father of Rivers,” as it was also poetically called, and used their utmost efforts to discourage him. “Those distant, nations,” they told him, “never spared the stranger; their mutual wars filled their borders with bands of warriors; besides which the Great River abounded in monsters, which devoured both men and canoes; while the excessive heats caused death.” Marquette was not discouraged; “I shall gladly lay down my life for the salvation of souls,” said he.
Marquette, accompanied by Joliet a trader of Quebec, five other Frenchmen and two Algonquin guides, paddled up Green Bay in birch-bark canoes; then ascending Fox River crossed the portage to the Wisconsin, where in a beautiful region dwelt the friendly Kickapoos, Mascoutins and Miamis, to whom Allouez had preached with success. A council of the old men was called to receive the strangers; and the two guides left them, from fear of the Sioux and the fabulous terrors of the region into which they were venturing.
And now, on the tenth of June, 1673, Marquette, Joliet and their French companions, being, as Marquette himself says, “left alone, in this unknown land, in the hands of Providence,” embarked on the Wisconsin, and sailed “between alternate prairies and hill-sides, without seeing a single Indian; and for the first time beholding herds of buffalo, the lowings of which and the splash of their oars, were the only sounds which broke the silence of the primeval wilderness. Thus proceeded they for seven days, when they happily entered the Great River, with a joy that cannot be expressed.” So far the object of their mission was accomplished. And now the two birch-bark canoes, raising their sails, floated down the magnificent river unconscious into what regions it would lead them.