USA > Mississippi > The pioneers, preachers and people of the Mississippi Valley > Part 4
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A word of Donna Isabel, fair hapless lady. Faith- fully had she sent Captains Maldinado and Gomez Arias with ships and plentiful supplies in the fall of 1540. Waiting for a long time, they then coasted east and west in search of intelligence concerning the Adelantado. The next spring they came again, and the next, and the next, spending each summer in searching for some traces of the ill-fated party. At length in 1543 the tireless captains touched at Vera Cruz, and heard the sad tidings. Hastening to Havana, they broke the news to the Donna Isabel. Having thus long borne up against racking suspense and torturing doubt, hoping against hope, she now yielded, and died in the prime of her glorious beauty, the victim of ill-fated love and man's wild ambition.
Oh, river of the future! thy discovery was made at heavy cost, of gallant lives and a broken heart !
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Thy yellow waves are the enduring sepulchre of Her- nando de Soto, and the murmur of thy floods the ever-chanted dirge of the lady Isabel, the noble and faithful wife!
Lecture II.
MARQUETTE & LA SALLE.
MARQUETTE AND LA SALLE.
WHATEVER else Jesuitism may have done, it has given to History one of the noblest of those armies of Heroes and Martyrs, with the record of whose deeds and sufferings its pages are glorified. Nowhere does the love of souls, the contempt of danger and death, patient endurance of hunger, cold, nakedness and bonds, serene self-possession under stripes, and the joyful welcome of martyrdom, stand out in more illustrious contrast to the ordinary sordid and selfish phases of our nature, than in the early mission story of one region of this continent.
In the first settlement of Canada the two classes which most enlist our interest are the missionaries and the voyageurs-the one giving themselves to the service of the Church, and man's salvation ; the other, almost equally energetic and hardy, opening the resources of the Fur-trade, and thus connecting, by the ties of commerce, the kings and nobles of the old world with the hunting-grounds and wigwams of the Algonquins and Dacotahs, by the banks of Superior and on the headwaters of the Mississippi.
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Trade carried its votaries far into the wilderness, over pathless snows, through interminable forests, up mighty rivers, over the bosom of lakes that seemed like seas. The spell of gold was mighty then, as now ; but for once Traffic was outdone by Religion, and the Cross inspired men with a daring enterprise and lofty resolution, such as the world has seldom witnessed.
Father Dreuillettes penetrated the forest lying between the St. Lawrence and the Kennebec, down which he floated to the sea. Sojourning with the savages ten months, bearing them company in their hunts, suffering hardships like a good soldier, every- where showing fortitude and courage, patience and strength equal to their own, he completely won their love and reverence. Youges, taken prisoner by the relentless Iroquois, was made to run the gauntlet three times, suffered torment of many kinds, saw his converts inhumanly butchered, cheered them by his ministrations of pitying love, although by so doing he exposed himself to their fate; and raising the chaunt in his captive journeyings, provoking the brutality of his persecutors by steadfastness, carving the cross on the trees near Albany, he showed him- self faithful in all things. At length liberated by the Dutch of New York, he sailed for France, as the only way by which he could reach Canada again, returned thither, went upon an embassy of peace to
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his old tormentors the Mohawks, and there he met the death of which he had had presentiment.
Daniel fell beneath the remorseless blows of the same barbarians, as he knelt in pious ministry to the spiritual needs of his Huron converts. Brebœuf, a great strong man whose brawny courage knew no fear, whose ruling passion was a cupidity for martyr- dom, could yet in humble patience bide his Master's time. Employing himself the while in uninterrupted missionary labors, he is taken with his associate L'Alle- mand, a man of delicate frame, but dauntless cour- age, by the Iroquois, in the midst of their neophytes. They refuse to save themselves by flight, lest the offices of the Church should thereby be lost to the dying around them. Brebœuf is tied to a stake, and exhorting his tormentors to repentance, and his con- verts to be faithful even until death, his brother priest is led before him robed in a garment of bark filled with rosin. As the torch is applied the unshrinking L'Allemand exclaims, " We are made a spectacle this day unto men and angels." Brebœuf's holy counsels are checked, as his upper lip is cut off, and hot irons thrust down his throat. He too is set on fire, and then boiling water is poured over both to extinguish the flames. Brebœuf entered through the gates into the City above, Jerusalem, the Mother of us all, in three hours. L'Allemand lingered seventeen ; then he too joined that company which
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no man can number, that have come up out of great tribulation. When we hear of faith and love like theirs, can we say, contemptuously, "they were Jesuits," and forget that they were also Christians sealing their testimony with their blood ?
As the ranks were thus thinned, they were filled by others, who pressed forward, coveting to wear the thorny crown, persuaded that in due time it would become a crown of glory. Among these was James Marquette, a young Frenchman. Born in the small but stately city of Laon, perched upon a hill-side in the provence of Aisne, his family name was a lus- trous one in the annals of France before his time, and has been since. Our own land is indebted to others, bearing it, besides himself. Three Marquettes fell in the French army which aided in our Revolu- tionary struggle.
Born in 1637, our young Frenchman's early years were blessed by the care of a devout, godly mother, who infused into his mind a reverent simplicity and an ardent love which kept him pure unto the end. From our mothers we borrow our best treasures. They lend in gladness, not dreaming of return. But they receive a hundred fold in this world, and in the world to come life everlasting.
At seventeen Marquette renounced the world and became a Jesuit. Twelve years were spent in teach- ing, and then, burning with a holy zeal to do good to
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the heathen, his mind inflamed by the devotion of Francisco Xavier, the model he had chosen for imita- tion and emulation, he embarked for Canada in 1666. Buoyant with health and hopes of usefulness, the young missionary touched the shores of the new world. Behind him rolled the sea which separated him from home, friends and mother. Before him lay a wilderness continent, with its mighty lakes and rivers, its inaccessible forests and endless plains, now clad in tufted verdure and then garmented in snow and ice. The roving tribes that peopled the land were savages ; but they had souls to be saved. True, their tomahawks had drank the blood of his brethren, and their scalping knives were yet red with the gore of martyrs. Still they had immortal souls which might be won for Christ. Was it not work for an angel ? Surely it was for a Christian disciple. But he might perish ? No matter. Would he not fall with his face toward Zion, die where he might ? So he girded up his loins and betook him to his labor.
Not in haste are life's great achievements wrought ; but slowly, and by sure degrees. So Mar- quette first patiently studied the Indian dialects, be- coming a learner that he might fitly teach.
He was at first destined to a mission far to the northward, and we find him in 1667 at Three Rivers, preparing himself under Father Dreuillettes. But this design was abandoned and he was next ap-
4
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pointed to the Ottawa Mission-as that of Lake Superior was then called-to labor with Father Allouez. Quebec had been founded by Champlain
in 1608. Le Barron, a Recollet missionary who came with him, had ascended the Ottawa River, and reached Lake Huron. In 1629 Canada fell into the hands of the English, but in 1631 it was restored to France. In 1639 Nicolet, interpreter of the colony, had descended the Wisconsin to within three days' sail of the Mississippi, or sea, as he understood the Indian name " Great Water," to mean. Two years later Isaac Youges and Charles Rambout, Jesuits, stood upon Sault Ste. Marie, looking down upon the land of the Sioux and the basin of the Mississippi, with hearts longing to enter it. But an Iroquois war, the next year, frustrated their design. Thus, while
the Dutch of New Netherlands were huddled around Fort Orange, five years before Eliot addressed his first Indian audience six miles from Boston, and while the country between Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut was almost a pathless wilderness, Jesuit Fathers stood upon the water-shed dividing the streams of the Atlantic from those of the Gulf. Honor to whom honor is due! "There is nothing new under the sun " is a well-worn adage which comes to us from a man of many experiences. And as our knowledge increases, the same cry is more than once forced from our lips. You will pardon me
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I trust, for diverging from my narrative to furnish you another example of its truth. Two of the chief movements of our time were antedated on this Con- tinent, nearly two centuries. I refer to the Know Nothing and the Maine Law parties. About 1670 it was made death, by a statute of New York, for a Jesuit to plant foot on soil of that colony; and about the same period there arose a formidable dis- pute in Canada between the civil and clerical authorities, as to whether the vending of ardent spirits to the Indians should be allowed. The ques- tion embroiled the colony, and was hotly contested for a long time. It even served to discolor the his- torie page of the time. At length the church side of the case was shown to be unconstitutional, or something of that sort, and the Indians were mur- dered the same as before, public opinion settling down into what is now the verdict of juries in rail- road accidents-Nobody to blame.
But to return to our young missionary, whom we left in Canada, a little over thirty years of age, about to embark for his field of labor, the Ottawa Mission. His ultimate destination was the founding an estab- lishment among the Illinois ; but the novice must be tried in a vineyard already opened, before he attempts to plant one himself.
The south shore of Superior near Ste. Marie, and then La Pointe, are the centres of his operations. Allouez
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has gone to Green Bay, and so up Fox River, and he is alone with the savages. But not the less faithfully does he labor, that he has no superior to overlook him, nor brother to give him sympathy. On him, as on all, the Master's eye is fixed, always on us, never off us; and the exceeding great reward, does it not await the faithful workman's toils ? And fellowship; has he not one ever near him, in his lonely lodge, who is touched with the feelings of his infirmities, who was tempted in all points even as he ?
It is pleasant and helpful too, to read the unvar- nished tale of this simple minded man's efforts to do good to the untutored children of the forest ; how he taught the lessons of virtue and chastity, of forbear- ance and forgiveness of injuries ; how he strove to win them from their idle superstitions to the worship of the living and true God; to go with him as he administers the holy rite of baptism to a dying child, or speaks kind words to sick and suffering men and women ; to be near him as he devoutly performs the offices of the church or expounds the mysteries of the faith in his little thatched chapel of bark. He with- stands the proud and willful to their face ; the way- ward he admonishes firmly but gently ; he cheers the penitent and encourages the desponding ; everywhere he seems striving to possess his soul in patience, to do the work of an evangelist, and make full proof of his ministry. Ever and anon news of the great
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river and the mighty tribes inhabiting its banks reaches him, and he longs to discover it and them. His heart yearns for the Illinois ; for are they not his people ? But the time has not come yet. The dis- coverer of the age must wait-as who must not ? History were indeed a dead letter-were less service- able by half than the debris of perished races, whereon the geologist reads the autograph of every separate cycle-did we not gather from it words and thoughts to inspire ourselves with strength. From the fields of the almost silent Past there comes a whisper which is yet mightier than thunder, a word for all the lowly and great, the striving and despairing, but most of all to the impetuous, easily discouraged young, who need it most: Haste not, Rest not ! Time, Faith, Energy, these conquer the world. This lesson do I learn from Marquette's lodge in the wilderness. Therefore is his life, as that of all truly noble souls, of perennial interest to mankind.
Next year he will go to the Illinois. Ile has been studying their language from a young Indian of that tribe, and is already pretty well master of the tongue. But his hope is defeated, for a war breaks out between the Sioux and the people among whom he lives. With them he must voyage eastward, with his back upon the land of promise. But at length he is with his Hurons at Mackinaw, and his glance wan- ders over the lake to the west and southwest ; it jour-
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neys whither his feet would go, his month filled with glad tidings to the people of the Illinois and the river Mississippi.
Long, as men count it, must he yet wait. Never- theless, humbly but fervently does he pray that, if it be Heaven's will, he may go whither his heart leads. At last, on the eve of the festival of the Immaculate Conception, the feast of all the year to him, a canoe from Canada comes up the glassy plain. Its occu- pant is the Lieutenant Joliet, an old fur-trader, and he brings important letters to Father Marquette.
The minister of France has written to Talon, Inten- dant of Canada, to cause the South Sea to be disco- vered. This was the vision of the time, as the short route to China and the East is of ours. Then, they thought a river might bear them on its brimming flood to the South Sea; now, we opine the iron road will take us thither. M. de Talon, the retiring gov- ernor, suggests to Frontenac, the newly appointed, that Joliet is the best man for the purpose, and the ecclesiastical authorities appoint Father Marquette. Here are the letters. The winter is spent at Mackinaw in preparation. With crowds of Indians around them, the trader and the priest, kneeling on the ground, drew maps of such countries as the savages knew, lying toward the setting sun. After much study and prayer, with great lopes, yet lowly hearts, our friends set out for their long journey in the spring of 1673.
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Across the lake to Green Bay ; then to the head of Fox River, where is an Indian village, in the centre of which stands a great cross planted by the zeal of Allouez, and crowned by the Indians with wampum and peltries of the choicest kind. The Indians, with hearts warmed toward the French, throng around Marquette and Joliet with proffers of hospitality and kindness ; but when told the object of their expedition, their faces express great solicitude, and their mouths are filled with dismal tales of the dangers of the way. The land of the Great River and the vast stream itself are filled with frightful monsters and terrible men. Every effort was made to dissuade the good father and his party from their mad enterprise. But they were not to be moved. A party of Indians helped them across the portage to the Wisconsin River, where, launching their canoe, they were quit- ted by their guides, commended their way to God, and committed themselves to the stream of the sky- colored water. Floating upon its tranquil bosom seven days, they passed through a country of marvel- lous beauty and fertility. It was the month of June, and Nature had donned her gayest colors. Vines clambered among the trees. Sometimes from a bold bank the grassy plain stretched as far as the eye could reach, without a mound or grove to obstruct the view-the green land at last melting into the blue-rimmed horizon. Then the bottom land meeting
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them with verdant freshness at the river's edge was terminated ere long in a noble bluff, whose sides and summit were crowned with stately trunks and branch- ing foliage, casting lines of grateful shadow on the sward. The unflecked blue above them painted itself in the flood, seeming to create an azure vault beneath their birch pirogue. The breezy stillness was only broken by the river's lapse, the paddle's dip, or their own low murmurs of delight at the fairy-land scene around them. Thus for a week they floated, until, on June 17th, their placid stream swept them with its parting wave into the swifter current of the Great River, whose affluence makes glad a continent. Streams with broader openings to the sea there are, with grander historic associations, with more roman- tic memories thronging their banks ; but what one of all earth's watercourses can vie with this in its majes- tic appeal to the imagination and the hope of man- kind ? Oh, James Marquette, can the rivers of thy goodly land of France, the Oise, by whose sedgy marge thy childish feet so often wandered, the Seine, traversing the great town of Paris, the Rhone, "thie arrowy Rhone," the Rhine, burdened with its pur- ple hills clad in vines and crowned with castles- can any bear comparison with this? They flow through the dreamy lands of the Past; its realms are the Future's. Like some great royal conqueror it leaps from its almost unnoted birth-place, Itasca
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Lake, rushes forward to exact the tribute brought from far provinces, east and west, and after its tri- umphal procession of two thousand five hundred miles, freely receiving, freely giving in many a belt- ing zone, hurls broad and far its accumulated trea- sure, that thereby a world may be enriched.
A great silent joy is in Marquette's heart, and as grateful tears wet his eyes, he offers a fervent thanks- giving that he has been permitted to look upon this wonder. The devout spirit thinks of the greatest birth of Time, and in commemoration of it he names the river "The Conception." This is the 17th June, 1673.
For eight days they glided over the crystal pave- ment between shores widening to the distance of a half league, and then approaching in rocky bluffs, as if they were the towers and battlements of hostile cities, to within a few hundred yards. In vernal pas- ture lands they beheld the moose and elk and deer cropping the herbage ; and lower down vast herds of buffalo grazed in the meadows, and the woods wert filled with flocks of wild turkeys. But for fifteen days they had not come in sight of trace or habitation of human beings. At length they discern a well- marked trail on the west bank of the river, and land to seek the men whose feet have left this trace. Si- lently, with minds moved alternately by hopes and fears, Marquette and Joliet proceed six miles, wher
4*
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they descry three Indian villages. Uttering a loud cry, they rapidly approach them. A company of old men came forth to meet them, and when asked by Marquette who they are, replied, "we are Illinois." Great was the good father's joy. He explained who he and his companion were; whereupon they were joyfully welcomed with the peace-pipe. Then fol- lowed a six days' feast. Heartily did the simple natives urge the Frenchmen to tarry with them. But their task was not half performed, and they must up and away. Taking an affectionate leave of their kind hosts, they were escorted to their canoe and pre- sented with a calumet magnificently adorned, than which no more valuable gift could have been made them.
Passing the mouth of the Illinois, our voyagers sighted the Piasau bluff, where frightful monsters were traced high up on stupendous rocks, and the relics of a rude limning are still to be seen. Soon after there arose upon the air a roar as from a distant cataract. As they drew nearer they found it to be the rush of the Pekitanonie (the muddy river, as the Algonquins had named the Missouri), which rushed like some untamed monster upon the peaceful Mississippi, hurl- ing it with tremendous violence upon the opposite shore. In the boiling muddy tide, seething and tumultuous, were borne great trees which it had uprooted in its wild career. Already had the Father
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heard of a western river which flowed downward to the sea, and by this one, he hoped some day to reach it. Now his course was southward. Passing an eddy which the natives held to be a demon, they reached the Ohio, then called the Oubachi or river of' the Shawnees. Still descending, they came to the warm lands of the cane, where the mosquitoes seemed to be holding a carnival. Wrapping them- selves in their sails as a protection against the pesti- ferous insects, they were after a time hailed from the shore by a party of wild wanderers, who were armed with guns and knives, obtained they said by trading with Christians to the eastward. Further on they were threatened by a hostile demonstration from a large party of natives, who advanced with menaces and brandished arms to meet them. It was a trying moment. But Marquette was equal to it. Invoking the protection of the Virgin Mother, he calmly stood in the prow of his bark, holding aloft the calumet. It saved their lives. The warriors were pacified, received the strangers kindly, and entertained them with great courtesy. This was about the thirty- third parallel of latitude. Below this our little party only ventured ten leagues. They learned that the sea was ten days sail to the south; and that there were many tribes near it, who traded with Europeans and who were at war among themselves. Satisfying themselves that the river emptied between Florida
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and Tampico, and fearing to fall into the hands of the Spaniards, they determined to return. The main object of the enterprise was accomplished. Until this time it had been a vexed question whether the great river emptied into the sea near Virginia, into the Gulf of Mexico, or into that of California. Hav- ing discovered the river, learned the location of its mouth and above all else in the mind of the good Marquette, preached the religion of the Cross to the heathen, opening the way for other missionaries, they reascended to the mouth of the Illinois, to the head of which they went, passing through the most delec- table land they had yet looked upon. Here
they were met by the Kaskaskias, who hailed them with great joy, and conducted them in triumph across the portage to the Lake ; for Marquette pro- mised to return and preach to them.
Four months from the time of setting out, they reached the mission of St. Francis Xavier; and thus these seven men-five boatmen bore them company-performed one of the notable feats of history. The following spring Joliet embarked for Quebec, but as he was attempting to shoot a rapid in the St. Lawrence, not far from his destination, his canoe upset, causing the loss of his journal and maps and nearly of his life. We catch one more look at this worthy on the island of Anticosti, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which was granted him for his ser-
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vices; and then the shadow Joliet joins his fellow shades and vanishes forever.
Marquette, without thought of worldly fame or honors, or reward of any kind, studies only how he may reeruit his health, which has been sadly shat- tered, and thereby be able to redeem his pledge to the Kaskaskias. This is his only earthly wish-to preach to his beloved Illinois. He shall not die until it be fulfilled.
Spending the winter of 1674-5 near Chicago, in great feebleness, suffering from cold and want, but cheered by a peaceful, loving heart, he is able to reach his Indians in the spring, and solemnize among them the Easter ceremonies. But his old malady returns. Nothing is left him now but to die. And with the mighty instinct of the human heart, long ing to breathe his last among his brethren, he bids farewell to his sorrowing neophytes, and takes his way to Mackinaw. His three faithful boatmen accompany him, tending him with all gentle care, lifting him in and out of the canoe, for the wasted man is too weak to walk. As they reach the outlet of a small stream in Michigan, which now bears his name, he can go no further. A rude lodge is reared on the edge of the stream, with an altar before which the dying saint is laid. IIe calmly gives directions to his sobbing attendants concerning his burial. They take his crucifix from the breast, where it has
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