First French Foot-Prints Beyond the Lakes. 97 



on his sedia gestatoria, or portable throne, into the house of council. 

 There, holding a bowl of brandy which the Indians thought to 

 be water, he set it on fire. He thus made them believe that he 

 could at will burn up their lakes and rivers. A score of years 

 before, — certainly as early as 1665, — he had become a potentate 

 among Pottawatomies near Grreen Bay. Perrot was worshipped 

 with clouds of incense from a hundred calumets, because he 

 brought iron, — especially in the shape of guns and tomahawks. 

 The further west he went the more unheard of his iron and pow- 

 der, and the more they proved him a God. 



One mode of reverence was to break off" branches of trees and 

 sweep the path his feet were about to tread. But the divine honors 

 paid to Perrot were not always delightful. The lowas, whom he 

 pronounces the greatest weepers in the world, wept most effusively 

 at his coming. Their welcome, he tells us, was bathing his face 

 with their tears — "the effusions of their eyes, and alas ! of their 

 mouths and noses too ! " 



Other French adventurers threw up rockets^ and thus record the 

 sensation : " When the Indians saw the fireworks in the air and 

 the stars fall from heaven, the women and children began to fly, 

 and the most courageous of the men to cry for mercy and implore 

 us very earnestly to stop the play of that wonderful medicine. 

 Had there been any accidental explosion of chemicals so that 

 one of the braves was blown up, he would have deemed it all a 

 part of the show, and as soon as he caught breath would have 

 exclaimed: 'What next? What in the world will these magi- 

 cians do next?' " 



The simplest French conveniences were sublime in aboriginal 

 eyes. The Mascoutins, when Perrot appeared among them, knew 

 no mode of producing fire except by rubbing two sticks together. 

 Such friction was ineffectual whenever the sticks were at all wet, 

 and they were often too damp to kindle — an Irishman would 

 say — till one had made a fire and dried them. Naturally, Per- 

 rot's tinder-box was venerated as an angel from heaven. JSTo 

 wonder that a hundred dozen of these Promethean fire-bringers 

 are set down in the outfit of La Salle. One of an antique pat- 

 tern, lately discovered in an Illinois cave, was shown me in 

 7 



