USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > Discovery and conquests of the Northwest, with the history of Chicago, Vol. I > Part 2
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I6
First Interview with Illinois.
found themselves on its broad surface of moving waters, "with a joy I cannot express," says the devout Mar- quette .*
As they passed down its waters the scenery was changed. The banks were less precipitous than the bold headlands of the Wisconsin, and the country looked more promising, as they obtained occasional views of it through the openings along its wooded mar- gin. Herds of buffalo were seen grazing on the ample pasturage of the prairies, which must have struck the beholders as a waste of nature's gifts.
In the neighborhood of the Des Moines river they discovered human footprints and hesitated not to fol- low them. Leaving their canoes in charge of the five men who accompanied them, Marquette and Joliet took the Indian path, and after two leagues' travel, came in sight of their villages. The two adventurers shouted to attract attention, and four chiefs advanced to meet them with friendly tokens. "Who are you?" inquired Marquette, in good Indian dialect. "We are Illinois," answered the chiefs. This word in their language, the Algonquin, meant "men," and the chiefs emphasized the expression to distinguish themselves from the Iro- quois, whom they designated as brutes. The incentive to this reply was to give their guests an assurance of friendship. They feasted them with roast buffalo, fish and sagamite (hominy), and even honored them with the proffer of roast dog. The distinguished guests, however, declined this dainty repast, although they did not call in question the spirit of hospitality with which it was offered. After suitable prayers, benedictions and compliments, the Frenchmen took their leave, continu- ing their course down the river.
Just above Alton is a high bluff of solid rock. On its time-worn surface some artistic Indian had in time past exhibited his accomplishments by painting a monstros- ity in human form.+ Marquette was startled at the sight. But the departed spirit of the savage artist whose genius inspired it, and immortalized his own
* Marquette named it Conception River, in honor of the day on which it was discovered.
t No historic authority can be quoted for this assumption, but the theory is plausible enough to warrant its belief in absence of contravening testi- mony. Portions of this picture were visible as late as 1850, and might have been till this day had not the stone on which it was painted been quarried out for building purposes.
.
17
-
The Arkansas Reached.
memory, did not come to his rescue. Therefore the pious Marquette was indignant at the sight of the im- pious device, and doubted not that the devil was its author. Fain would he have effaced the sacrilegious picture, but it was beyond his reach. Painfully he ruminated on this evidence of demonology in the land, as the two bark canoes were borne along as if propelled by the forces of nature, till suddenly they found them- selves in the breakers of the Missouri river, whose eddies whirled their light water craft like chaff in a miniature hurricane. This momentary danger diverted his thoughts from the unpleasant subject, and they pro- ceeded along with extra caution.
They passed the site of the present city of St. Louis, slumbering beneath the shades of a full-grown forest,. with no premonition of her future destiny. The giddy heights of Grand Tower and the Ohio river were passed without meeting any more signs of life, but on the left bank, below this river, they again saw Indians. A. friendly interview was secured by means of the calumet,. and to their astonishment they found them dressed in broadcloth and armed with guns .* No tidings of the sea coast could be obtained from them, and the two bands of voyagers parted company with an interchange of courtesies.
Below the Ohio the monotony of scenery is chilling. Here the massed floods from the Western slopes of the Alleghenies and the Eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains roll along through a low, spongy soil, and with a power mighty and unremitting wear away on one bank and replenish on the other,-on one side a primeval forest being undermined and falling by piece- meal into the river, while on the other a young nursery of cottonwood trees sprouting up, to occupy ground that, but a few decades past, was the bosom of the roll- ing deep, and a few centuries past a mature forest of giant trees.
Through these glooms the adventurers passed down the river, till the mouth of the Arkansas was reached. Here again they met Indians, savage as nature could make them. The hot-headed young men of the tribe hurled their war clubs at the new-comers, one of which flew over Marquette's head; the pious missionary prayed.
* They probably were a roving band from the far distant borders of civil- ization on the Atlantic coast.
18
Passage up the Illinois River.
to the holy Virgin, and presented the potent calumet. The old men, seeing the situation, call back and restrain the young attackers, and a friendly meeting is the re- sult, for which Marquette, with his accustomed loyalty to the blessed Virgin, gives all the credit to her, without reserving any for the calumet.
From their new hosts they learned that the mouth of the Mississippi was but ten days' travel distant, but it was not deemed prudent to advance farther, with the intense heat of July upon them, and the danger of being picked up by Spanish adventurers imminent. They had passed below the point where De Soto had discovered and crossed the Mississippi in 1541, which was one hun- dred and thirty-two years previous, but no trace of his work had remained, not even in tradition .*
The object of their expedition had been fulfilled, which was to discover the great river and determine whether it emptied into the Gulf of Mexico or the Pa- cific Ocean. In the latter case the hopes of the past century would be realized, which was a Western pass- age to the land of the Grand Kahn. That the great river emptied into the Gulf of Mexico no doubt could now exist, but that the waters of the Missouri led to lakes or straits which opened into the Pacific, was still a pleasing illusion.
The voyagers, with thankful hearts, now determined to return, and on the 17th of July, after an affectionate leave-taking of their conciliated, but rather doubtful friends, turned their canoes up-stream, when came the tug of tugging; for 'twas no easy task to stem the cur- rent of the Mississippi. Patient toiling at the oar finally brought them to the mouth of the Illinois river, where the Kaskaskias volunteered to conduct the voyagers to Lake Michigan by a more convenient route than the one by which they had come, which was by the Illinois, the Desplaines and the Chicago rivers.t
* Some late historians have stated that Spanish coats of mail, captured from De Soto, were found here by the French, but their authority is not quoted.
" This is conceded to be the first record made of any allusion to the Chi- cago portage, although Alouez, Nicholet and Perrot have each been cred- ited by some writers as the fir-t to visit Chicago. But it is possible, and even probable, that the Illinois chiefs informed Alouez of the place at his great council at the Chippewa village on Lake Superior in 1665; yet no record is made of such information by either Shea or Parkman. That wan- dering French hunters had visited this place before is believed by some critical historians, but such a theory, though probable, is speculative.
19
Social Grades of the Illinois.
Marquette gladly availed himself of their services, especially as it would bring him to the acquaintance of new tribes to whom the blessed words of the Gospel had never been spoken. On the Illinois river, along the shores of Peoria lake, and in the vicinity of Starved Rock, near the present site of Utica, were the principal villages of the Illinois tribes. The squaws dug up the rich prairie soil with sharpened sticks, planted their corn, and cultivated it with the same rude instruments. The yellow harvest was carefully stored in caches* for the common use of the tribe, none of which was wasted in the manufacture of whisky or assigned to tax gath- erers. Their government, or rather their absence of government, was simple. If one person committed an offence against another, prompt vengeance was taken on the spot. All shared alike in creature comforts, but yet an aristocracy existed among them, quite as marked as can be found at the same place now. It was not based on wealth, for they had nothing which could represent it, beyond a few glittering ornaments which were within the means of the humblest porcupine hun- ter; but it was based on some act of daring or wise or heroic counsel which had promoted the public weal.
These qualifications gave their possessors the right to speak in their councils and challenged due homage from the whole tribe. By these qualifications in grada- tions of political power and influence nice distinctions were made by common consent; and he who would transcend these distinctions would be ostracised un- sparingly, with no asylum wherewith to hide his dis- grace.
To these high-minded chiefs Marquette offered the Christian religion, and no opposition was made to it; indeed they set their subordinates an example of patron- age to it by manifesting a commendable interest in it, nor did they by implication or otherwise show any signs of preference for their own God, the Great Spirit. Mar- quette was delighted at the prospect that a nation might be born in a day, especially when they listened to his religious tenets and elementary explanations of the plan of salvation, and politely invited him to return and set up the standard of the cross among them. Thus passed the hours of his sojourn among the flexible Illinois; and
* These were excavations in the ground, not unlike cellars, covered with vearth.
1
20
Discovery of Chicago.
when the pious missionary resumed his journey with Joliet and his company of five, a large delegation of his- late Indian friends accompanied them to Chicago. Few people ever came to this place for the first time without an excited curiosity to see it, and it is only a reasonable presumption that these French adventurers were eager to behold the face of the dear old lake, in whose spark- ling waters they had for many years glided their light barks, in its northern extremity, and especially to see the little inlet stream called Chicago, to which the In- dians attached so much importance.
'Twas in September. The emerald hues of the prairie. had already been mottled with the mature tints of autumn. The summer haze had vanished, and the stimulating breath of the familiar old lake greeted them cheerfully, as the party crossed the carrying place from the Desplaines to the South branch of the Chicago river. Into the little stream they launched, their boats, and their wake sent tiny waves among the tall grasses, which bathed their roots in the water's edge on each side. Here the two bands parted with a hearty good- bye; the Indians returned to their lodges, and the Frenchmen took their course down the western shore of the lake.
It is in the economy of Providence to hide the book of fate from all, else who could move in their accus- tomed spheres. Where is the fruitage of those seeds. which Marquette planted during his life-labors in the wilds of America, and where the haughty tribes whom the French hoped to elevate to their own standard by infusing their own spirit into their facile but keen senses ?
The enthusiasm and dash of the French and their tawny allies have melted away before the silent power which began without high expectations, on the stubborn coast of the Atlantic, and the Chicago of to-day is no inconsiderable monument of the force of this power. Its destiny, however, was yet a sealed book, and so it remained for a century from this time.
Marquette and his party soon arrived at the Mission at Green Bay. His strength was exhausted, and he was obliged to remain here for the winter to rest, while Joliet should return to Canada and report their dis- coveries to Frontenac, the governor. Ample notes of travel had been carefully prepared, and also an auto-
Marquette's Map.
21
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chemin and ampiolate -
LAC SVPERIEVR OV DE TRACY
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FATHER MARQUETTE 45 at the time of his voyage,
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PAPÍRAMA CHAMSETA DANIASSA TAKIKEA . ALAIC NE
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FAC SIMILE 47 of tu Autograph Map ofthe, MISSISSIPPI OR 46 Conception River, DRAWN BY et
22
Marquette Winters at Chicago.
graph map of the country through which they had passed, on which rivers and Indian villages had been laid down with a fair approximate to accuracy .* Mar- quette rested at the comfortable quarters of the mission house at Green Bay the ensuing winter, and when spring came he was still too weak to return to preach the gos- pel to the Illinois tribes, according to his promise when he left them. He therefore deferred his departure till the heats of summer were over.
On the 25th of October, feeling revived by the bracing influences of autumn, he, with two companions, Pierre and Jacques, and a band of Indians, started on his mission to the Illinois. It took them a month to reach Chicago. Here again the strength of the mis- sionary gave out, and his companions built a cabin for him on the South branch of the Chicago river, where. they nursed him with tender solicitude through the winter, and where the Indians often brought him such luxuries as their limited means could supply to relieve his wants. +
There were also some fur traders "at the portage," which meant Chicago, who had just established them- selves at this important point, so lately made known to the Canadians. They also often visited Marquette's humble cabin and divided their scanty supplies of eat- ables with the invalid missionary .¿ From items of his journal it appears that his Indian friends, who visited him, with all their willingness to receive his religious instruction, had the bad taste to ask him for powder, to which request the missionary replied: "Powder I have not. We came to spread peace through the land, and I do not wish to see you at war with the Miamis." |
The spring floods, which broke up the ice, on the 29th of March were so high as to cover the ground where his cabin stood and make the wretched hut untenable.
* This map is still preserved in the college of Ste. Mary in Montreal. A. fac simile of it has been published by Mr. Shea, of New York, and inserted in his book entitled, "Discovery of the Mississippi." It has also been in- serted in the margin of Blanchard's Historical Map of the United States,. published at Chicago in 1876, and a copy reduced in scale is herewith pre- sented.
+ Shea's Discovery of the Mississippi Valley, page 54. Parkman's Dis- covery of the Great West, page 68. į Shea, page 54.
The Illinois and Miamis to the east of them had been enemies for many years, and remained so till La Salle, in 1682, with skillful diplomacy, nego- tiated a permanent peace between them. See Tonty's Life of La Salle.
23
Death of Marquette.
They were therefore forced to seek their canoe as an asylum from the swollen waters, and. in it they passed over to the Desplaines and down its current to the Illi- nois river. The last item on his journal bears date of April 6th. On the 8th he arrived at the great village of the Illinois, which was situated near the present site of Utica. He was received as "an angel from heaven," says the relation. Five hundred chiefs and old men seated themselves, in a circle, around the Father, and outside of these were fifteen hundred of the commoner classes; beyond these were the women and children. The whole village had assembled on the green, leaving their empty houses behind, without fear of burglars or faithless servants' misdemeanors during their absence. With deep pathos the words of the Father, in pure In- dian dialect, penetrated the hearts of his hearers, and inspired them with a transient veneration for the Chris- tian's God. These were his last services. His sands of life had almost run out, and feeling a desire to reach: Canada before he died, he made haste to take his leave. He had endeared himself to his Indian flock, proofs of which they gave by accompanying him in large numbers on his return as far as Chicago, and contending with each other for the honor of conveying his baggage.
From Chicago he had determined his route to Cana- da by the Eastern shore of Lake Illinois, as Lake Mich- igan was then called. The same two companions were with him who had conducted him from Green Bay to the Illinois villages. The love between these young men and their spiritual father was tender and sincere on both sides, and as they plied their oars along the still shores of the lake with unremitting strokes, the father instructed them how to bury him when death came, for he now felt certain that he could not live to reach Canada.
Arriving at a place a little below Sleeping Bear Point, the father felt a strong desire to land, but his compan- ions, wishing to make all possible haste on the way, tried to persuade him to keep on their course. At that mo- ment a storm began to make a commotion in the waters, and they landed, built a hut of bark for their dying master, and carried him in their arms from the boat to it. While his strength yet held out he took the precau- tion to write down his own sins, or what he called such; since his last confession to his superior, for propitiation.
24
Marquette's Remains Removed to St. Ignace.
Next he promised to remember his two attendants in heaven; and then, after asking their pardon for the trouble he had caused them, he begged them to lie down to rest by his side, promising to awaken them when the last agony came. In about two hours he called them to his side, and soon died in transports of joy.
Pierre and Jacques buried him on the bank of the lake, and erected a large wooden cross over his grave, and with deep dejection left the spot where their be- loved father had lain down to take his last rest, where twenty years of toiling through the wilderness had brought him.
It was late in the spring, on the 19th of May, that his death took place, and the news of the sad event came to the different tribes of the country, not long after they had returned to their various homes from the usual winter's hunt. A universal tribute of respect was shown to his memory. The Ottawas, of Canada, did more than to express this in words. The next spring, 1676, as one of their hunting parties were returning from the vicinity of the grave, they dug up the remains and separated the bones from the decayed flesh, according to the In- dian custom, and enveloped them in a casket of birch bark. This done, they carefully conveyed the precious relics to the nearest missionary station, which was at St. Ignace, opposite Michilimackinac. As they ap- proached the place they were met by the priests at the head of a procession of the resident traders and Indians, and with impressive funeral services the bones were in- terred beneath the floor in the chapel.
"REV. FATHER: The peace of Christ. Having been compelled to remain all summer at St. Francis on account of my ill-health, and having recovered in the month of September, I waited for the arrival of our people returning from below (i. e., Quebec), to know what I should do for my wintering. They brought me orders for my voyage to the Mission of the Conception among the Illinois. Having met Your Reverence's wishes touching copies of my journal on the Mississippi river, I set out with Pierre Porteret and Jacques - Oct. 25, 1674. In the afternoon the wind forced us to lay up for the night at the mouth of the river, where the Pottawatomies were assembled; the head men not wishing any to go off toward the Illinois, for fear the young men would lay up furs with the goods they had brought from below, and after hunting beaver would resolve to go down in the spring, when they expect to have reason to fear the Sioux.
"Oct. 26. Passing to the village, we found only two cabins there, and they were started to winter at La Gasparde; we learned that five canoes of Potta- watomies and four of Illinois had set out to go to the Kaskaskia.
"27. We were detained in the morning by rain; in the afternoon we had fair weather and calm, and overtook, at Sturgeon Bay, the Indians who pre- ceded us.
25
Marquette's Journal.
"28. We reached the portage; a canoe which was ahead prevented our killing any game; we began our portage, and cabined for the night on the other side, where the bad weather gave us much trouble. Pierre did not come in till one o'clock at night, having got lost on a road on which he had never before been. After rain and thunder, snow began to fall.
"29. Having been compelled to change our cabinage, we continued to carry the bundles. The portage is about a league long, and very incon- venient in some parts. The Illinois, assembling in our cabin in the evening, ask us not to leave them; as we might need them, and they know the lake better than we do, we promised.
" 30. The Illinois women finished our portage in the morning; we are detained by the wind. No game.
"31. We start with pretty fair weather, and stopped for the night at a little river. The road from Sturgeon Bay, by land, is a very difficult one; we did not travel far on it, last fall, before we got into the woods.
"Nov. 1. Having said holy mass, we halted at night at a river, from which a fine road leads to the Pottawatomies. Chachagwessiou, an Illinois, much esteemed in his nation, partly because he concerns himself with trade, came in at night with a deer on his shoulder, of which he gave us part.
"2. Holy mass said, we traveled all day with fair weather. We killed two cats, which were almost clear fat.
"3. As I was on land, walking on the beautiful sand, the whole edge of the water was of herbs similar to those caught in nets at St. Ignace; but coming to a river which I could not cross, our people put in to take me on board, but we could not get out again on account of the swell. All the other canoes went on except the one that came with us.
"4. We are detained. There is apparently an island off shore, as the birds fly there in the evening.
" 5. We had hard work to get out of the river. At noon we found the Indians in a river, where I undertook to instruct the Illinois, on occasion of a feast, which No-wasking had just given to a wolfskin.
"6. We made a good day's travel. As the Indians were out hunting, they came on some footprints of men, which obliged us to stop next day.
"9. We landed at two o'clock, on account of the fine cabinage. We were detained here five days on account of the great agitation of the lake, though there was no wind; then by the snow, which the sun and a wind from the lake melted next day.
"15. After traveling sufficiently, we cabined in a beautiful spot, where we were detained three days. Pierre mends an Indian's gun. Snow falls at night and melts by day.
"20. We slept at the Bluffs, cabined poorly enough. The Indians remain behind, while we are detained by the wind two days and a half. Pierre, going into the woods, finds the prairie twenty leagues from the portage. He also passed by a beautiful canal, vaulted as it were, about as high as a man; there was a foot of water in it.
" 21. Having started about noon, we had hard enough work to make a river. The cold began from the east, and the ground was covered with a foot of snow, which remained constantly from that time. We were detained there three days, during which Pierre killed a deer, three wild geese and three turkeys, which were very good. The others passed on to the prairies. An Indian having discovered some cabins, came to tell us. Jacques went with him there the next day. Two hunters also came to see me. They were Maskoutens to the number of eight or nine cabins, who had separated from each other to be able to live. They travel all winter, with hardships almost impossible for Frenchmen, by very difficult roads; the land being full of streams, small lakes and marshes. They are very badly cabined, and eat or fast according to the spot where they happen to be. Having been detained by the wind, we remarked that there were large sand-banks off the shore, on which the waves broke continually. There I felt some symptoms of a dysentery.
" 27. We had hard enough work to get out of the river; and having made
26
Marquette's Journal.
about three leagues, we found the Indians, who had killed some buffalo, and also three Indians who had come from the village. We were detained there by a wind from the shore, immense waves that came from the lake, and the cold.
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