But at the close of the fortnight they one day came upon the footprints
of men in the mud of the western bank - a Robinson Crusoe experience
which carries an electric shiver with it yet, when one stumbles on it in
print. They had been warned that the river Indians were as ferocious
and pitiless as the river demon, and destroyed all comers without
waiting for provocation; but no matter, Joliet and Marquette struck into
the country to hunt up the proprietors of the tracks. They found them,
by and by, and were hospitably received and well treated - if to be
received by an Indian chief who has taken off his last rag in order to
appear at his level best is to be received hospitably; and if to be
treated abundantly to fish, porridge, and other game, including dog, and
have these things forked into one's mouth by the ungloved fingers of
Indians is to be well treated. In the morning the chief and six hundred
of his tribesmen escorted the Frenchmen to the river and bade them a
friendly farewell.
On the rocks above the present city of Alton they found some rude and
fantastic Indian paintings, which they describe. A short distance below
'a torrent of yellow mud rushed furiously athwart the calm blue current
of the Mississippi, boiling and surging and sweeping in its course logs,
branches, and uprooted trees.' This was the mouth of the Missouri, 'that
savage river,' which 'descending from its mad career through a vast
unknown of barbarism, poured its turbid floods into the bosom of its
gentle sister.'
By and by they passed the mouth of the Ohio; they passed cane-brakes;
they fought mosquitoes; they floated along, day after day, through the
deep silence and loneliness of the river, drowsing in the scant shade of
makeshift awnings, and broiling with the heat; they encountered and
exchanged civilities with another party of Indians; and at last they
reached the mouth of the Arkansas (about a month out from their
starting-point), where a tribe of war-whooping savages swarmed out to
meet and murder them; but they appealed to the Virgin for help; so in
place of a fight there was a feast, and plenty of pleasant palaver and
fol-de-rol.
They had proved to their satisfaction, that the Mississippi did not
empty into the Gulf of California, or into the Atlantic. They believed
it emptied into the Gulf of Mexico. They turned back, now, and carried
their great news to Canada.
But belief is not proof. It was reserved for La Salle to furnish the
proof. He was provokingly delayed, by one misfortune after another, but
at last got his expedition under way at the end of the year 1681. In
the dead of winter he and Henri de Tonty, son of Lorenzo Tonty, who
invented the tontine, his lieutenant, started down the Illinois, with a
following of eighteen Indians brought from New England, and twenty-three
Frenchmen.
