THE SCATTERING OF THE TRIBES

Throughout the fight Tonty’s life hung upon a thread. An impetuous Onondaga had stabbed him in the side, but fortunately the knife had glanced from a rib. Another Indian seized him by the hair; and a third raised his hat upon a gun. Then one of the chiefs recognized him as a white man and intervened. He was carried into the midst of the camp, where the chiefs gathered about him and heard his plea for peace. The Illinois, said Tonty, were just as much the friends of the governor of Canada as were the Iroquois. Why should the Iroquois make war upon them?

It was an unquiet parley. Behind Tonty stood an Indian warrior with ready knife; and now and then as they talked he wound his fingers in the white man’s hair and raised his black locks as if to scalp him. Outside of the circle the fight went on. Then came the report that Iroquois men were killed and wounded and that the left side was yielding. Dismayed, the chiefs asked their white captive how many men were in the fight. Tonty, seeing a chance to prevent hostilities, replied that there were twelve hundred Illinois and that fifty Frenchmen were fighting with them. Overcome with consternation at these figures, the chiefs hastened to give Tonty the present of wampum and beg him to make peace for the Iroquois.

The Illinois with their wounded white leader and his two men turned back to the village. A league from home they came upon Father MembrÉ hurrying out to meet them. The sound of guns had brought him from his cabin in the fields back of the town. They crossed the river together, and Tonty was glad enough to lie down in one of the lodges and let the priest and young men tend his wound.

Scarcely had the Illinois reached their lodges when, looking back, they saw little groups of Iroquois on the other side of the river. A few of these soon found means of crossing, and they hovered near the village in a pretense of seeking food. But the Illinois, who were not children in the art of Indian warfare, were well aware of the ways of the treacherous Iroquois, and they watched these straggling bands with gloomy foreboding.

By a magnificent sally the Illinois had daunted their enemy, and Tonty’s exaggeration of their numbers had completed the impression of their power in the minds of the Iroquois. But the Illinois well knew that they were no match for the Iroquois with their abundance of arms and ammunition and their allies, the Miamis. Sooner or later the Iroquois would learn the true numbers of the villagers. Then the fierce warriors of the Five Nations would harry them until they found an opportunity to crush them out of existence. Massacres, tortures, and burnings could be their only possible end if they stayed in the village. After their warriors were slain, what of the women and children, anxiously waiting in the secluded refuge down the river?

Tonty and his men were probably safe, for the Iroquois had too much fear of the French in Canada to harm them without great provocation. But the Illinois were not safe. So they deserted their village, took to their pirogues, and passed downstream to join their wives and old men.

In their hearts the Indians saw the wisdom of flight, for they knew what had happened in the past. They did not forget the fate of other nations whom the Iroquois had practically exterminated. Would the invasion of the Illinois country have any other end? Yet it was with heavy and reluctant hearts that they gave up their lodges to the hated foe; and bands of warriors trailed back up the river for another look at their one-time home. Appearing on the hills a short distance behind the village they gazed down upon the ruined lodges which had been fired by the Iroquois, who had piled timber and half-burned posts in the form of a rude fort. In a lodge some distance away Tonty had been left still suffering from his wound and attended by his five men.

More and more of the Illinois gathered on the hill, until the array of warriors alarmed the Iroquois, who still nursed the belief that twelve hundred Illinois were haunting their rear. The Illinois continued their watch day by day and presently saw two men leave the town and climb the hill toward them. They soon distinguished the peculiar swing of their friend Tonty. With him was an Iroquois Indian. Joyfully they welcomed him and listened to his message. The Iroquois wished to make a treaty of peace and had sent one of their men as a hostage.

The Illinois in turn sent back with Tonty one of their own young men, and negotiations were soon begun. But the peacemaker had been badly chosen, for the young Indian, eager for a treaty of peace, promised everything and finally revealed to the Iroquois the true number of the Illinois warriors. The Iroquois said little to the Illinois messenger, but sent him back to his people that night to tell the chiefs to come next day within half a league of the fort and conclude the peace. Then they turned on Tonty with wrath and reproaches for having deceived them.

The next day at noon Illinois and Iroquois met not far from the village. The Iroquois, hiding their true plans, gave presents to their late opponents and bound themselves to a firm and lasting peace. But Tonty, who was not misled, managed to send Father MembrÉ to the Illinois to tell them that the peace was only a pretense, that the Iroquois were making elm-bark canoes, and that if the Illinois did not flee at once they would be followed and their whole tribe massacred.

At night the Iroquois called Tonty and Father MembrÉ into the rude fort, and having seated the white leader they laid before him presents consisting of six bundles of valuable beaver skins. By the first two presents the Iroquois meant to inform Governor Frontenac that they would not eat his children and that he should not be angry at what they had done. The third bundle of skins was to be a plaster for the white man’s wound. The fourth represented oil to be rubbed on the white men’s limbs because of the long journeys they had taken. With the fifth they told Tonty how bright the sun was; and with the sixth they said that he should profit by it and return the next day to the French settlements.

“When are you going to leave the Illinois country?” asked the dauntless white man.

“Not until we have eaten these Illinois,” replied the angered chiefs.

With a quick motion of his foot Tonty kicked the beaver skins from him—an unpardonable offense among Indians. Angry looks and gesticulations from the Indians greeted this act, but they hesitated to lay hands upon Tonty for he was a friend of Frontenac, the powerful governor of New France. Perhaps, too, they realized, better even than did the Illinois, the power of his heavy right hand, for he had lived in the land of the Iroquois before he had come out into these Western wilds.

Scarcely restraining themselves, they drove the two men from the fort. Tonty and the friar returned to their comrades at their lodge. No longer was their presence in the Iroquois camp useful to the Illinois or safe for themselves. Hardly expecting to see the dawn, they passed the night on guard resolved to sell their lives as dearly as possible. But they were not molested, and when day came they embarked for the far-off settlements. They were the last white men to leave the valley of the Illinois where carnage and woe were to reign.

The journey of Tonty and his companions was a difficult one, and calamity met them early on the way. After some five hours’ paddling, they stopped to mend their canoe. The old friar Ribourde went off in the woods a little distance to pray, and was set upon and murdered by a roving band of Kickapoos. After searching for him in vain, the rest of his party went on. By short journeys they reached the Lake of the Illinois and turned northward. Winter overtook them; their food gave out; and they fell to eating acorns and grubbing up roots from beneath the snow. When their moccasins wore out,—for most of their travel was now by land,—they made themselves shoes out of a cloak which the murdered friar had left behind. Weeks passed by as they journeyed on. They came now and then upon deserted Indian camps, and, desperate with hunger, they tried to eat the leather thongs which bound together the poles of the Indian lodges. They even chewed the tough rawhide of an old Indian shield which they had found. Tonty was sick almost constantly with fever and scarcely able to walk. Not until December did the party of five men reach Green Bay, where at last they were given a warm welcome by the Indians and some Frenchmen in a Pottawattomie village.

Back in the valley of the Illinois, after the departure of the little group of French from the village, all pretense at peace was cast aside, and Iroquois fury turned itself loose. The Illinois had gone, leaving them only a deserted village, on which they wreaked their vengeance. Having destroyed the lodges by fire, they dug up the caches of corn and burned and scattered the contents. Then they moved on to the village graveyard and tore down from the scaffolds the bodies that had been left there for a time before burial. From the graves of the village they dug up the long-buried relatives of the departed inhabitants, and scattered the bones in every direction. Out of pure fiendishness they despoiled this most sacred spot in the Indian town. On the half-burned poles of the lodges they hung skulls for the crows to pick. Then they followed the fleeing Illinois down the river.

The Illinois gathered again at the place where their women and children had taken refuge. It was a long narrow bit of land on the north bank of the river. Between it and solid ground was a heavy, muddy swamp across which only a four-foot path of firm ground was to be found. On this semi-island, half a league in length and but fifteen or twenty paces wide, the women had built temporary lodges. Only from the water side could attack be made, and here they piled up their pirogues in the form of a wall.

The Iroquois, following close after, camped on the shore directly across the river, where over a hundred huts were soon erected. On the bark of near-by trees they cut the savage story of the raid, and traced rude pictures of the chiefs and the number of warriors that each chief led out. Five hundred and eighty-two braves were thus recorded. On one tree a diagram was traced showing the scalps of the Illinois who had been killed and the number of captives who had been taken; while on their own record of warriors were figures represented as pierced with gunshot or wounded with arrows.

The Illinois, terrified by the pursuit of their enemy, crossed the narrow path to the mainland and took up their journey downstream. At night they again camped beside the river; and soon the fires of the Iroquois camp shot up from the other shore. Another day’s march, and again two camps appeared at night on opposite banks. The Iroquois, who did not yet dare to make an attack, hung on the flanks of the Illinois like a pack of cowardly wolves.

The Illinois traveled slowly, for they were greatly impeded by the women and children and old men, and food must be gathered by the way. But just as slowly and deliberately followed the Iroquois. Occasionally they tried to put the Illinois off their guard by offerings of peace; but the Illinois were wary. The two armies, marching side by side with only the river between, passed Peoria Lake, and the men of the Peoria village crossed over and joined their brethren. When the Iroquois came to the deserted ruins of Fort CrÈvecoeur below the village, they stopped long enough to pull the nails out of the timbers of the skeleton of the boat by the water’s edge.

Day after day the Illinois and Iroquois walked beside the river. Night after night camp-fires faced each other across the waters. On the way the Illinois had gathered many of their tribes together. The Peorias, the Cahokias, the Moingwenas, the Tamaroas, and several minor tribes had joined the moving army like parts of a rolling snowball. If only they were armed with guns and free from their wives and children, they might strike a blow that the Iroquois would long remember. But wiser counsels prevented such a move.

It became more and more difficult to find food for so many; and as they neared the Mississippi River they longed to separate and go off each tribe to its own hunting-ground. They held a parley with the enemy across the river, and a truce was declared. Then the Illinois tribes separated. The Moingwenas with several of the smaller tribes went down the Mississippi; the Peorias crossed to the western side; while the Kaskaskias and Cahokias preferred to go up the river toward the land of the Sioux. But the Tamaroas, most luckless of all, lingered near the mouth of the Illinois River. It was the opportunity for which the Iroquois had waited, for their long-time policy had been to “divide and conquer.” Such had been their plan when they came into the valley, separating the Miamis from the Illinois and falling upon the latter.

As soon as the other tribes were out of the way, the Iroquois attacked the Tamaroas. That feeble tribe fled in terror. Some of the men escaped, while the rest were massacred. Along the margin of the Illinois, not far from its mouth, was an open meadow; and here were enacted scenes such as had long made the Iroquois hated and feared. The captives were put to horrible torments: some were roasted to death, some skinned alive. The nerves and sinews of some were torn out; and when their tortures had done their work, the heads and even whole bodies of women and children were placed upon upright poles and upon stakes driven into the ground.