entire village then formed a straggling procession, gazing at the Frenchmen, whom they guided farther to the chief's town. He also met them standing with a naked retinue at his door, and the calumet was again smoked.

The Illinois lodges were shaped like the rounded cover of an emigrant wagon, high, and very long, having an opening left along the top for the escape of smoke. They were made of rush mats, which the women wove, overlapped as shingles on a framework of poles. Rush mats also carpeted the ground, except where fires burned in a row along the middle. Each fire was used by two families who lived opposite, in stalls made of blankets. The ends of the lodge had flaps to shut out the weather, but these were left wide open to the summer sun. During visits of ceremony a guest stood where he could be seen and heard by all who could crowd into the wigwam. But when the Illinois held important councils they made a circular inclosure, and built a camp-fire in the center. Many families and many fires filled a long wigwam, though Jolliet and Marquette were lodged with the chief, who had one for himself and his household.

Whitening embers were sending threads of smoke towards a strip of blue sky overhead when the missionary stood up to explain his errand in the crowded inclosure, dividing his talk into four parts with presents. By the first gift of cloth and beads he told his listeners that the Frenchmen were voyaging in peace to visit nations on the river. By the second he said:

"I declare to you that God, your Creator, has pity on you, since, when you have been so long ignorant of him, he wishes to become known to you. I am sent on his behalf with this design. It is for you to acknowledge and obey him."

By the third gift they were informed that the chief of the French had spread peace and overcome the Iroquois. And the last begged for all the information they could give about the sea and intervening nations.

When Marquette sat down, the chief stood up and laid his hand on the head of a little slave, prisoner from another tribe.

"I thank you, Blackgown," he said, "and you, Frenchman, for taking so much pains to come and visit us. The earth has never been so beautiful, nor the sun so bright, as to-day; never has the river been so calm and free from rocks, which your canoes removed as they passed! Never has our tobacco had so fine a flavor, nor our corn appeared so beautiful as we find it to-day. Here is my son. I give him to you that you may know my heart. Take pity on us and all our nation. You know the Great Spirit who made all: you speak to him and hear him; ask him to give us life and health and come and dwell with us."

When the chief had presented his guests with the Indian boy, and again offered the calumet, he urged them, with belts and garters of buffalo wool, brilliantly dyed, to go no farther down the great river, on account of dangers. These compliments being ended, a feast was brought in four courses. First came a wooden dish of sagamity or corn-meal boiled in water and grease. The chief took a buffalo-horn spoon and fed his guests as if they had been little children; three or four spoonfuls he put in Marquette's mouth and three or four spoonfuls in Jolliet's. Three fish were brought next, and he picked out the bones with his own fingers, blew on the food to cool it, and stuffed the explorers with all he could make them accept. It was their part to open their mouths as young birds do. The third course was that most delicate of Indian dishes, a fine dog; but seeing that his guests shrank from this, the chief ended the meal with buffalo meat, giving them the fattest parts.

The Illinois were at that time on the west side of the Mississippi, because they had been driven from their 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.

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 offered it now to the sun and now to the earth, made it dance from mouth to mouth along the lines of spectators, with all its fluttering plumes spread. The hazy sun shone slanting among branches, tracing a network of flickering leaf shadows on short grass; and liquid young voices rising and falling chanted,

"Nanahani, nanahani, nanahani, Naniango!"

Stone Hatchet.

The singers were joined by the Indian drum; and at that another dancer sprang into the circle and took the weapons from the mat to fight with the principal dancer, who had no defense but the calumet. With measured steps and a floating motion of the body the two advanced and attacked, parried and retreated, until the man with the pipe drove his enemy from the ring. Papooses of a dark brick-red color watched with glistening black eyes the last part of the dance, which celebrated victory. The names of nations fought, the prisoners taken, and all the trophies brought home were paraded by means of the