THE CAPTIVE RELEASED

It was about the middle of July, 1673, when the Arkansas Indians saw the band of white men leave their village to start out upon the return voyage. The weeks that followed their departure from the Arkansas town were full of toil for the voyagers; for now in the heat of summer they must paddle against the current of the greatest of American rivers. At length, coming to the mouth of the Illinois and believing that it offered a shorter route than the one by which they had come, they turned into its waters and paddled up its smooth stream toward the Lake.

In the course of this journey up the Illinois River they came one day, with great surprise, to a village in whose lodges lived the same Peoria Indians whom they had last seen on the other side of the Mississippi, in the town on the bank of the Iowa River. The Peorias, too, were surprised to see the seven white men and the Indian boy come paddling up the stream.

Here the tired voyagers were welcomed with such hospitality that they lingered for three days in the village. The Indian boy renewed old acquaintances, while Marquette passed from lodge to lodge, telling the Indians of the God of the French who had guarded them in their long journey and protected them from pestilence and the disasters of the river, and from torture and murder by hostile tribes of Indians. The Peorias in turn told the priest of their brother tribes along the Illinois River and of the wars they waged together against the Sacs and Foxes of the North and the bands of Iroquois from the East. But as they looked into the face of the priest, they saw lines of suffering and sickness, and they knew that he had not borne with ease the long and arduous trip.

When the voyagers made ready to depart, the Indians gathered at the river bank to bid them good-bye. As they were about to embark, some Indians brought to the edge of the stream a sick child and asked Father Marquette to baptize it. With great joy the priest complied, for it was the first and, indeed, the only baptism on the whole summer’s voyage. A few minutes later the little child died.

The canoes were then pushed into the stream, the men dipped their paddles, and, rounding a point of land a short distance up the stream, disappeared from view. The group of Indians turned back to the village, bearing the body of the dead child. They wrapped it tenderly in the skins of wild animals and laid it away on a scaffold of poles high above the reach of prowling wolves.

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Autumn came upon the land and through the fallen leaves along the shore the young Indians passed back and forth among the villages on the Illinois. From the Kaskaskias, who dwelt farther up the river, the Peorias learned that Marquette and Joliet had stopped at the upper village, and that the black robe had promised to come again and preach to them. Moreover, when they left this village, one of the chiefs of the nation, with a band of his own men, went with them up the river, across the portage, and as far as the Lake of the Illinois—as they then called Lake Michigan. There they left the white men paddling valiantly up the west shore toward Green Bay and the Jesuit Mission of St. Francis Xavier.

At Green Bay, Marquette stopped with his brother priests and tried to gain strength enough to return to the Illinois villages. But Joliet went farther. Taking the Indian lad with him, he journeyed as far as the settlement at the Straits of Mackinac. There the young Indian spent such a winter as he had never known before. About him were the great log lodges of the French; and in the streets of the little town walked men of strange and curious ways. There were dark-bearded traders, priests with black robes and cowls, trappers and coureurs de bois in blanket coats, and fur caps; and Indians, from about the Great Lakes, gathered there to sell furs and buy the white man’s guns and liquor.

The Indian boy soon began to understand and talk the language of the white men, and by the end of the winter he could even read and write a little in French. He was quick to learn the ways of the Frenchmen; and his many attractive qualities endeared him to Joliet.

When the spring of 1674 came on, Joliet and several Frenchmen embarked in a canoe and began the descent of the Great Lakes. They were bound for the home of the governor of New France at Quebec, high on the rocks beside the St. Lawrence. As a gift to the governor, Joliet was taking the Indian boy who had shared his wanderings in the Great Valley.

Joliet and his companions were weeks upon the journey, paddling steadily by lake shore and river, through straits and past wooded islands. Only once were they compelled to carry their canoe over a portage. At last they came near to the town of Montreal, with the high hill rising up behind it. They were nearly home now, and the heart of Joliet must have leaped high as he thought of the long months he had spent on his perilous journey. Soon he would come in triumph before Frontenac, governor of Canada, and tell him of his explorations and put into his hands his map and papers and the precious journal of his voyage. These documents lay beside him in the bottom of the canoe in a box, together with some relics of the far-away valley of the Mississippi.

Only La Chine Rapids—the Sault St. Louis as they were then called—lay between the voyagers and Montreal, and then the road was clear and smooth to the high rock of Quebec. The canoe entered the swift-running water. Foam-covered rocks swept past them. Many a time had Joliet passed through these rapids. Probably, after all the perils through which he had safely come on the Great River, he looked only with joy upon this familiar rush of waters. Perhaps to the Indian boy came the thought of the demon whom his people feared in the surging waters of the Mississippi. Surely another such demon lived in this troubled passage, with death in its relentless grasp.

As if to prove real the fears of the Indian, the demon of the water reached out a great wet arm and overturned the frail canoe. Tossed into the fierce current were Joliet and his French boatmen, the Indian boy, and the precious box of papers; while downstream went blindly bobbing the bark canoe. Wildly the men struggled in the rushing stream, the current all the while wrenching at their legs and playing with their feeble efforts. Joliet fought till the breath was gone from his lungs and the strength from his limbs. Then he lost consciousness.

The unpitying sun made a long arc in the heavens above the tossing human bodies. Four hours had Joliet been in the water when fishermen pulled him out on shore and brought him back to life. Two of his men were drowned; and his precious box of papers lay somewhere beneath the rushing waters.

And the Indian boy? He, too, had given up to the evil spirit of the rapids. No more would he pass like a waif from tribe to tribe; no longer would he try with eyes and tongue and fingers to learn the ways of his new white friends. Forever he had left the rolling hills and streams of the Great Valley, the green prairies so full of sunshine, and the woods so full of game. He had passed to the happy hunting-ground of his people.