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Page 64
After touching at several other towns of this people, the voyagers
resumed their course, guided by two of the Arkansas; passed the sites,
since become historic, of Vicksburg and Grand Gulf; and, about three
hundred miles below the Arkansas, stopt by the edge of a swamp on the
western side of the river. Here, as their two guides told them, was
the path to the great town of the Taensas. Tonty and Membr� were sent
to visit it. They and their men shouldered their birch canoe through
the swamp, and launched it on a lake which had once formed a portion
of the channel of the river.
In two hours they reached the town; and Tonty gazed at it with
astonishment. He had seen nothing like it in America: large square
dwellings, built of sun-baked mud mixed with straw, arched over with a
dome-shaped roof of canes, and placed in regular order around an open
area. Two of them were larger and better than the rest. One was the
lodge of the chief; the other was the temple, or house of the sun.
They entered the former, and found a single room, forty feet square,
where, in the dim light,--for there was no opening but the door,--the
chief sat awaiting them on a sort of bedstead, three of his wives at
his side, while sixty old men, wrapt in white cloaks woven of
mulberry-bark, formed his divan. When he spoke, his wives howled to do
him honor; and the assembled councilors listened with the reverence
due to a potentate for whom, at his death, a hundred victims were to
be sacrificed. He received the visitors graciously, and joyfully
accepted the gifts which Tonty laid before him. This interview over,
the Frenchmen repaired to the temple, wherein were kept the bones of
the departed chiefs. In construction, it was much like the royal
dwelling. Over it were rude wooden figures, representing three eagles
turned toward the east. A strong mud wall surrounded it, planted with
stakes, on which were stuck the skulls of enemies sacrificed to the
Sun; while before the door was a block of wood, on which lay a large
shell surrounded with the braided hair of the victims. The interior
was rude as a barn, dimly lighted from the doorway, and full of smoke.
There was a structure in the middle which Membr� thinks was a kind of
altar; and before it burned a perpetual fire, fed with three logs laid
end to end, and watched by two old men devoted to this sacred office.
There was a mysterious recess, too, which the strangers were forbidden
to explore, but which, as Tonty was told, contained the riches of the
nation, consisting of pearls from the Gulf, and trinkets obtained,
probably through other tribes, from the Spaniards and other
Europeans....
On the next morning, as they descended the river, they saw a wooden
canoe full of Indians; and Tonty gave chase. He had nearly overtaken
it, when more than a hundred men appeared suddenly on the shore, with
bows bent to defend their countrymen. La Salle called out to Tonty to
withdraw. He obeyed; and the whole party encamped on the opposite
bank. Tonty offered to cross the river with a peace-pipe, and set out
accordingly with a small party of men. When he landed, the Indians
made signs of friendship by joining their hands,--a proceeding by
which Tonty, having but one hand, was somewhat embarrassed[3]; but he
directed his men to respond in his stead.
The Indians of this village were the Natchez; and their chief was
brother of the great chief, or Sun, of the whole nation. His town was
several leagues distant, near the site of the city of Natchez; and
thither the French repaired to visit him. They saw what they had
already seen among the Taensas,--a religious and political despotism,
a privileged caste descended from the sun, a temple, and a sacred
fire. La Salle planted a large cross, with the arms of France
attached, in the midst of the town; while the inhabitants looked on
with a satisfaction which they would hardly have displayed, had they
understood the meaning of the act....
And now they neared their journey's end. On the sixth of April, the
river divided itself into three broad channels. La Salle followed that
of the west, and D'Autray that of the east; while Tonty took the
middle passage. As he drifted down the turbid current, between the low
and marshy shores, the brackish water changed to brine, and the breeze
grew fresh with the salt breath of the sea. Then the broad bosom of
the great Gulf opened on his sight, tossing its restless billows,
limitless, voiceless, lonely as when born of chaos, without a sail,
without a sign of life.
La Salle, in a canoe, coasted the marshy borders of the sea; and then
the reunited parties assembled on a spot of dry ground, a short
distance above the mouth of the river. Here a column was made ready,
bearing the arms of France, and inscribed with the words,--"LOUIS LE
GRAND, ROY DE FRANCE ET DE NAVARRE, REGNE; LE NEUVIEME 1682." ...
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