Part 1 (1/2)
The Story of Tonty.
by Mary Hartwell Catherwood.
INTRODUCTION.
No man can see all of a mountain at once. He sees its differing sides.
Moreover, it has rainy and bright day aspects, and summer and winter faces.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
The romancer is covered with the dust of old books, modern books, great books, and out of them all brings in a condensing hand these pictures of two men whose lives were as large as this continent.
La Salle is a definite figure in the popular mind. But La Salle's greater friend is known only to historians and students. To me the finest fact in the Norman explorer's career is the devotion he commanded in Henri de Tonty. No stupid dreamer, no ruffian at heart, no betrayer of friends.h.i.+p, no mere blundering woodsman--as La Salle has been outlined by his enemies--could have bound to himself a man like Tonty. The love of this friend and the words this friend has left on record thus honor La Salle. And we who like courage and steadfastness and gentle courtesy in men owe much honor which has never been paid to Henri de Tonty.
Book I.
A MONTREAL BEAVER FAIR.
1678 A. D.
THE STORY OF TONTY.
I.
FRONTENAC.
Along the entire river front of Montreal camp-fires faded as the amphitheatre of night gradually dissolved around them.
Canoes lay beached in one long row as if a shoal of huge fish had come to land. The lodges made a new street along Montreal wharf. Oblong figures of Indian women moved from shadow to s.h.i.+ne, and children stole out to caper beside kettles where they could see their breakfasts steaming. Here and there light fell upon a tranquil mummy less than a metre in length, standing propped against a lodge side, and blinking stoical eyes in its brown flat face as only a bark-encased Indian baby could blink; or it slept undisturbed by the noise of the awakening camp, looking a mummy indeed.
The savage of the New World carried his family with him on every peaceable journey; sometimes to starve for weeks when the winter hunting proved bad. It was only when he went to war that he denied himself all squaw service.
The annual beaver fair was usually held in midsummer, but this year the tribes of the upper lakes had not descended with their furs to Montreal until September. These precious skins, taken out of the canoes, were stored within the lodges.
Every male of the camp was already greasing, painting, and feathering himself for the grand council, which always preceded a beaver fair.
Hurons, Ottawas, Crees, Nip.i.s.sings, Ojibwas, Pottawatamies, each jealous for his tribe, completed a process begun the night before, and put on what might be called his court dress. In some cases this was no dress at all, except a suit of tattooing, or a fine coat of ochre streaked with white clay or soot. The juice of berries heightened nature in their faces. But there were grand barbarians who laid out robes of beaver skin, ample, and marked inside with strange figures or porcupine quill embroidery. The heads swarming in this vast and dusky dressing-room were some of them shaven bare except the scalp lock, some bristling in a ridge across the top, while others carried the natural coa.r.s.e growth tightly braided down one side, with the opposite half flowing loose.
Montreal behind its palisades made a dim background to all this early illumination,--few domestic candles s.h.i.+ning through windows or glancing about the Hotel Dieu as the nuns began their morning devotions. Mount Royal now flickered a high shadow, and now ma.s.sed inertly against stars; but the river, breathing forever like some colossal creature, reflected all the camp-fires in its moving scales.
The guns of the fort had fired a salute to Indian guests on their arrival the evening before. But at sunrise repeated cannonading, a prolonged roll of drums, and rounds of musketry announced that the governor-general's fleet was in sight.
Montreal flocked to the wharf where already the savages were arrayed in solemn ranks. Marching out of the fortress with martial music, past the Hotel Dieu to the landing-place where Frontenac must step from his boat, came the remnant of the Carignan regiment. Even the Sulpitian brotherhood, whose rights as seigniors of Montreal island this governor had at one time slighted, appeared to do him honor. And gentle nuns of St. Joseph were seen in the general outpour of inhabitants.