THE LAND OF THE SIOUX

When morning came, Narrhetoba, one of the chiefs of the Sioux, appeared before the white men, asked for their calumet, filled it with his own tobacco, and smoked it in their presence. Henceforth he was their friend, despite the wiles of the old chief Aquipaguetin. Taking to their canoes that day, the party with the three white captives paddled upstream toward the home of the Sioux.

Each day at dawn an old man roused the braves with a cry, and before taking up the day’s paddling they scoured the neighborhood for enemies. For nearly three weeks they were on the way before they drew near to the Falls of St. Anthony. Time and again the old chief, mourning over his son’s unavenged death, threatened to kill the whites; then with covetous fingers he would gather up the gifts with which he made them buy their lives. Carrying with him constantly the bones of a dead friend, wrapped in skins decorated with the quills of porcupines, he would often lay this bundle before the captives and demand that they cover the bones with presents in honor of the dead.

As they journeyed the old chief would at times break out into a fierce temper and vow the destruction of the three strangers. But on such occasions he would be restrained by the other chiefs, who realized that if they killed these white men no more traders would come to the Sioux country bringing merchandise and guns—which they spoke of as “the iron possessed by an evil spirit.”

The Sioux watched the curious ways of Friar Hennepin, and when they saw him looking upon an open book and moving his lips in muttered words they were almost on the point of killing him—for surely he was a sorcerer conversing under his breath with an evil spirit that might be persuaded any moment to kill them all. Ako and the Picard, seeing the effect of the friar’s devotions, urged him to leave off such dangerous practices. But the stubborn Hennepin, instead of muttering his holy offices, now fell to singing from the book in a loud and cheerful voice, much to the relief of the Indians who feared this far less than the mumbled undertones.

At last they left the river not far from the Falls of St. Anthony and hurried away northward toward the villages that lay in the region of the broad Mille Lac, the long-limbed Sioux covering the ground with great speed. They waded streams covered by a coat of ice from the frost of the night before. Neither Ako nor the Picard could swim, and so they often passed over on the backs of the Sioux. Hennepin was not built for speed, and the Indians, impatient at his slow progress, set fire to the prairie behind him and then, taking his hands, hurried the frightened man of prayer ahead of the licking flames. When they came to the first village the war party finally separated, each Sioux going to his own home town.

The poor Picard, unable to conceal his growing fears, had roused the quick contempt of the Sioux, who seized him with no gentle hands, for they saw in him a coward deserving of no such respect as they willingly bestowed upon his sterner friend Ako. He should be treated like an ordinary Indian captive. So they painted his head and face with different colors, fastened a tuft of feathers in his hair, placed in his hand a gourd filled with small round stones, and made him sing shaking his rattle in the air to keep time to the music.

Yet like the tribes of the Illinois Valley, the Sioux were a hospitable people. They fed the white men with fish and with wild rice, seasoned with blueberries, and served upon dishes made of birch bark. Then they proceeded to divide among themselves such supplies as still remained in the hands of the white men. Three chieftains, moreover, living in as many villages, adopted the three prisoners and carried them off to their homes. Perhaps Ako was not sorry to part with the friar, for the boastful ways of Hennepin had sorely tried his patience.

It was the old chief Aquipaguetin who adopted Hennepin into his own family to take the place of the son he had lost. He gave the friar a great robe of ten beaver skins, trimmed with porcupine quills, and bade his half-dozen Indian wives treat him as a chieftain’s son. And when he observed how fatigued Hennepin was after the long journey, the chief ordered that a sweat-bath be prepared for him.

A sweat-house was set up with buffalo skins. Through a small opening, which was closed behind them, Hennepin and four braves entered, stripped to the skin. In the middle of this house, red-hot stones had been placed, and these, now sprinkled with water, gave off clouds of steam. As the perspiration poured from the men’s bodies the four Indians laid their hands upon the friar and rubbed him briskly; and when he was on the point of fainting with weakness he was carried out of the sweat-house and covered again with his robe. Three times a week the friar was given this sweat-bath, which he said made him as well as ever.

Hennepin and many of his belongings were a mystery to the Sioux Indians. His shaven head and face aroused their admiration, and so they put him to work shaving the heads of the young boys. He also bled the sick, and the strange medicines he carried about with him performed many a useful purpose among the ailing Sioux. He had brought with him an iron pot with three feet moulded in the shape of lion paws. This the Sioux dared not touch, unless they first wrapped their hands in a buffalo or deer skin. Not daring to keep it in the tepees or lodges, the women with great fear in their hearts hung it up outside on the limb of a tree.

In two other towns of the Sioux lived Ako and the Picard in primitive Indian fashion. The villagers found Ako a man after their own hearts, for he had lived with Indians, enjoyed their wild life, and knew their ways as did few white men. Gradually he learned the language of the Sioux, as he had learned the tongues of other tribes who dwelt in the river valleys to the south and east.

In their home country which stretched west and north for many a league, the Sioux tribes lived for the most part in groups of tepees—lodges far different from the rounded houses of the Illinois. In building the tepee, which was small and conical in shape, the squaws first planted about twenty poles in a circle and then bound them together near the top with a stout leather thong. This framework was covered with buffalo hides, sewed tightly together into one piece with a flap for an entrance which was always toward the east. From the fire in the center of the tepee the smoke rose and passed out of a hole where the poles were joined at the top. Some of the Sioux, however, lived in so-called bark lodges, which were made with a ridgepole and roofed with the bark of the elm tree.

The spring months of 1680, as they grew warmer and ran into summer, found the Sioux braves in the villages near Mille Lac eagerly looking forward to a buffalo hunt. Aquipaguetin urged his foster son to join the party in a long trip to the southwest. But Hennepin wanted now to get back to civilization, for he had found little success in his ministry. So he asked permission to make a journey down to the mouth of the Wisconsin, where he said La Salle had promised to send men with supplies and merchandise. After some discussion the Sioux bade him do as he wished and take the Picard with him. Accordingly when the buffalo hunters gathered together from the various villages, the Picard once more joined his friend the friar. Ako, on the other hand, not loath to see them go, cast his lot in with the hunters.

With OuasicoudÉ, or the Pierced Pine, the greatest chief of all the Sioux, as their leader, the hunting party followed the stream now known as the Rum River until it fell into the Mississippi a few leagues above the Falls of St. Anthony. Here the women of the party halted to commence work on birch-bark canoes. While awaiting the arrival of those who had gone to collect long strips of bark, the women set up frames or little docks of poles upon which to build the canoes. The buffalo hunters, having first sent a few of their number down to the Falls to offer a sacrifice to the spirit of the water, set off on their trip with Ako in their midst; and Friar Hennepin and the Picard started down the Mississippi alone in their canoe, hoping to reach the band of whites at the mouth of the Wisconsin.