nd Marchette
come from French families who settled here many generations ago."

Armand bowed, a quick jerk of his head and shoulders, to Pierre.
Somewhat to Auguste's relief, the angry man did not even look at him.
Abruptly he turned his back and strode across the hall to a side door.

Pierre said, "Most of those who live and work here at Victoire are
Illinois people of French descent. The town, Victor, grew up after we
built our home here. Most of the people there are Americans from
Missouri, Kentucky or back East. Everyone you meet in America is from
somewhere else."

_Not my people_, Auguste thought.

Marchette made another bow to Pierre and left, too, to go into another
connected house in which Auguste saw a fire burning under a huge metal
pot in another hearth. There was much smoke and steam in that lodge, and
he could not see everything, but the good smells were coming from there,
and he remembered that he had eaten nothing today but a little dried
venison.

Pierre took Auguste by the arm and led him to a place at the table near
Grandpapa. Guichard pushed a wooden seat made of sticks toward him. A
"chair," Auguste remembered, from Pere Isaac's picture book.

_Why do they sit up high and raise their food up so high?_ Auguste
wondered. Perhaps pale eyes did not keep their floors clean enough to
sit on and eat from. But these appeared very clean.

"This is a special meal in your honor," said Pierre. "Most of the people
who work on our land will be eating here with us." Men and women were
seating themselves at the other tables.

_A feast!_ thought Auguste. Perhaps there would be dancing afterward.

"How many people live on your land, Father?" he asked in Sauk.

"About a hundred men, women and children live and work here," Pierre
answered. "Beyond the hills to the west, by the river, is the settlement
called Victor, where another hundred people live. Many of them work for
us too. Nicole and Frank live in Victor."

Two hundred, thought Auguste. That was not so many, after all. There
were nearly two thousand people in the British Band.

Nicole sat beside him, Pierre across the table from him. Nicole went
through the names of the objects on the table--"plate," "glass,"
"knife," "fork," "spoon." Guichard was going around the table behind the
people sitting there, filling each glass with a red liquid from a
pitcher.

Auguste had seen beads and other small objects made of glass at
Saukenuk, but here glass was