V. French Settlements 102

VI. The Last Great Indian 117

HEROES OF THE MIDDLE WEST.

I.

THE DISCOVERERS OF THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI.

The 17th of May, 1673, Father Jacques Marquette, the missionary priest
of St. Ignace, on what is now called the north shore of Michigan, and
Louis Jolliet, a trader from Montreal, set out on a journey together.

Huron and Ottawa Indians, with the priest left in charge of them, stood
on the beach to see Marquette embark,--the water running up to their
feet and receding with the everlasting wash of the straits. Behind them
the shore line of St. Ignace was bent like a long bow. Northward, beyond
the end of the bow, a rock rose in the air as tall as a castle. But very
humble was the small mission station which Father Marquette had founded
when driven with his flock from his post on the Upper Lakes by the
Iroquois. A chapel of strong cedar 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
deciduous trees, for it was May weather, which means that the northern
world had not yet leaped into sudden and glorious summer. Though the
straits glittered under a cloudless sky, a chill lingered in the wind,
and only the basking stone ledges reflected warmth. The clear elastic
air was such a perfect medium of sight that it allowed the eye to
distinguish open beach rims from massed forests two or three leagues
away on the south shore, and seemed to bring within stone's throw those
nearer islands now called Round and Bois Blanc.

It must have wrung Marquette's heart to leave this region, which has
an irresistible charm for all who come within its horizon. But he had
long desired to undertake this journey for a double purpose. He wanted
to carry his religion as far as possible among strange tribes, and he
wanted to find and explore that great river of the west, about which
adventurers in the New World heard so much, but which none had seen.

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