own country on the Illinois
River by the Iroquois. The Illinois nation was made up of several united
tribes: Kaskaskias, Peorias, Kahokias, Tamaroas, and Moingona. Flight
scattered them, and these were only a few of their villages. They
afterwards returned to their own land. Their chief wore a scarf or belt
of fur crossing his left shoulder, encircling his waist and hanging in
fringe. Arm and leg bands ornamented him, and he also had knee rattles
of deer hoofs. Paint made of colored clays streaked his face. This
attractive creature sent the Indian crier around, beating a drum of deer
hide stretched over a pot, to proclaim the calumet dance in honor of the
explorers.

Marquette and Jolliet were led out in the prairie to a small grove
which sheltered the assembly from the afternoon sun. Even the women
left their maize fields and the beans, melons, and squashes that they
were cultivating, and old squaws dropped rush braiding, and with
papooses swarming about their knees, followed. The Illinois were nimble,
well-formed people, skillful with bow and arrow. They had, moreover,
some guns among them, obtained from allies who had roved and traded with
the French. Young braves imitated the gravity of their elders at this
important ceremony. The Illinois never ate new fruits or bathed at the
beginning of summer, without first dancing the calumet.

A large gay mat of rushes was spread in the center of the grove, and
the warrior selected to dance put his god, or manitou--some tiny carven
image which he carried around his person and to which he prayed--on
the mat beside a beautiful calumet. Around them he spread his bow and
arrows, his war club, and stone hatchet. The pipe was made of red rock
like brilliantly polished marble, hollowed to hold tobacco. A stick
two feet long, as thick as a cane, formed the stem. For the dance these
pipes were often decked with gorgeous scarlet, green, and iridescent
feathers, though white plumes alone made them the symbol of peace, and
red quills bristled over them for war.

[Illustration: War Club.]

Young squaws and braves who were to sing, sat down on the ground in a
group near the mat; but the multitude spread in a great circle around
it. Men of importance before taking their seats on the short grass, each
in turn lifted the calumet, which was filled, and blew a little smoke
on the manitou. Then the dancer sprang out, and, with graceful curvings
in time to the music, seized the pipe and offer