"It afterwards transpired that the old sheep was a trick and straight-race pony, celebrated among all the tribes of the south, and had lately won for his master six hundred ponies among the Kickapoos of the Indian Nation."
[2] They learned from these Indians to handle skin-boats, or "bull-boats," such as we shall see were in constant use among the Mandans of the upper Missouri.
[3] These people, sometimes called the Pawnee family, were scattered, in various wandering bands, from eastern Texas as far north as the Missouri.
Chapter XV
FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN
His Birth and Early Experiences.—His Description of Niagara Falls.—His Great Fraud.—His Real Achievement.—Captured by the Sioux.—Given to a Master.—Superstitious Fears of the Indians.—Goes with a Hunting Party.—Sees and names the Falls of St. Anthony.—Various Adventures.—Rescued and Freed.
We come now to tell the story of a man who was neither great nor good, but was a most picturesque and entertaining scamp, and who withal deserves some small place among the Pathfinders.
Imagine a burly friar, in robe of rough gray frieze, his head covered by a pointed hood, his otherwise bare feet protected by sandals, in his hand a stout cudgel, shuffling along on snow-shoes and dragging his scanty possessions on a sled, or, if it was summer, paddling his canoe from one lonely cabin to another, celebrating mass wherever he could get together a half-dozen people, telling them the gossip of the river, eating a robust meal, then pushing on to repeat the experience elsewhere, and you will have a good picture of Father Louis Hennepin, a man whose books describing his travels, real or imaginary, had, in their day, the widest popularity in Europe. Though he was an unconscionable braggart, and though he had no scruples about falsifying facts, yet, as the first person to publish an account of the Falls of Niagara, and as the discoverer and namer of the Falls of St. Anthony, he is fairly entitled to a place in a collection like this.