Heroes of the Middle West: The French

of St. Ignace, on what is now called the north shore of Michigan, and

edar posts covered with bark, his own hut, and the lodges of his people were all surrounded by pointed palisades. Opposite St. Ignace, across a league or so of water, rose the turtle-shaped back of Michilimackinac Island, venerated by the tribes, in spite of their religious teaching, as a home of mysterious giant fairies who made gurgling noises in the rocks along the beach or floated vast and cloud-like through high pine forests. The evergreens on Michilimackinac showed as if newborn through the haze of undefined deciduo

long desired to undertake this journey for a double purpose. He wanted to carry his religion as far as possible among strange tribes, and h

f the I

d not know whether this river flowed into the Gulf of California-which was called the Red Sea-or to the western ocean, or through Virginia eastward. Illinois Indians, visiting Marquette's mission after the manner of roving tribe

canoes yet had toughness equal to any river voyage. They were provisioned with smoked meat and Indian corn. Shoved clear of the beach, they shot out on the blue water to the dip of paddles. Marquette waved his adieu. His Indians, remembering the dangers of that southern country

nd seemed to meet and intermingle and to cover themselves with blue haze as they went down on the water. Priest and trader, their skins moist with the breath of the lake, each in his own can

s bore high honors in Laon, and their armorial bearings commemorated devotion to the king in distress. In our own Revolutionary War it is said that three Marquettes fought for us with La Fayette. No young man of his time had a pleasanter or easier life offered him at home than Jacques Marquette. But he chose to devote himself to missionary labor in the New World, and had already helped to found three

ph of J

h frontiersmen then wore. But Marquette retained the long black cassock of the priest. Their five voyageurs-or trained woodsmen-in more or less stained buckskin and caps of fur, sent the canoes shooting over the water with scarcely a sound, dipping a paddle now on t

on the chill lake, they drew their boats on shore; and Pierre Porteret and another Frenchman, named Jacques, gathered driftwood to make a fire, while the rest of the crew unp

re," said Pierre Porteret to Jacques, as he struck a spark into his

ous for supper. "Look now at me; I know the Indian way to start a blaze by taking two pieces of wood and borin

soon climbed pinkly through surrounding darkness. They drove down two forked supports to hold a crosspiece, and hung the kettl

with their feet to the camp fire, the tired explorers rested. They were still on the north shore of what we now call the state of Michigan, and their course had been due westward by the compass. A cloud of Indian tobacco smoke rose from the

f the voyageurs was heard to say as he stretched himself under the cano

red of the missionary, "that the word Puan m

rring to season that instead with the sugar they make from the maple tree. Therefore, the bay into which we are so

tribe on this bay allow the

ey are well made and tall of stature. I find Wild Oats a stranger name-the Menomonies are Wild Oats Indians. Since t

you learned ab

Fox, up which we must paddle, is as hard as the way to heaven, spec

r, did you ever have speech with that Jean Nicollet, who, f

er saw

ee, though he was long a renegade among savages

ng renegade among savages by forgetting

ostle, only half a dozen years his senior. But he was glad to be a free adventurer, seeking wealth and honor; not foreseeing that thou

ces, on knotted stalks which appeared above the water in June and rose several feet higher. The grain seed was long and slender and made plentiful meal. The Indians gathered this volunteer harvest in September, when the kernels were so ripe that they dropped readily into canoes push

roaring demon in it who could be heard for leagues; and the heat was so intense in those southern countries through which it flowed, that if the Frenchmen escaped all other dangers, they must d

first to keep the white man out of countries which he wa

bago Lake, Sacs on Fox River, and Mascoutins, Kickapoos, and Miamis. Fox River, which they followed from the head of the bay, and of which the lake seemed only an expansion, was a rocky stream. A later trav

em as seriously as he did their gentler neighbors, he could not help remarking to Jolliet that "th

gone farther. They were to enter new lands untrodden by the white race. They were in what is now called the state of Wisconsin, where "the soil was goo

s, and Marquette had been commissioned of Heaven to preach. Making the chiefs a present, without which they would not hav

Miamis with them. If these kindly Indians disliked to set the expedition further on its way, they said nothing but very polit

titude-perhaps the last kindly natives on their perilous way-and at the knoll in the midst of prairies where hospitable rush houses stood and would stand un

d both cargo and boats carried overland to a bend of the Miscousing, which was the Indian name for Wisconsin River. "This portage," says a traveler who afterwards followed that way, "is half a league in length, and half of th

r, making shallows like tumbling discs of brilliant metal,-a river in which the canoes might sometimes run aground, but one that deceived the eye pleasantly, with islands all vine covered, so when a boat clove a way between two it was a guess how far the Wisconsin spread away on each side to shores of a fertile land. Oaks, walnuts, whitewood, and thorn trees crowded the bank

ow left the waters which flow into the great lakes and are discharged through the St

ss, to the southwestward. We know it is a branch of the great river. I am becoming convinced,

nce they covered in a week. Drawing their canoes to the shore at night, they pitched camp, varying the monotony of their stores with fish and game. Perhaps they had learned that wild gr

ike the Miscousing, though on sounding, Jolliet found the water to be ten fathoms, or sixty feet, deep. The shores receding, and then drawing in, gave unequal and irregular width to the stream. But it was unmistakably the great river they had sought, named then as now by the Indians, Mississippi, though Marquette at once christened it Conception, and a

thrown back in an echo from the hills; five caps were whirled as high as paddles could raise them. But Marquette said, "

ACQUES M

in the Capitol