98 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



Ottawa. Possibly it is one of the twelve hundred imported by 

 La Salle, Had lucifers been known to the French, starting 

 camp-fires in a twinkling, they must have converted every Indian 

 into a fire-worshipper and conquered the continent. 



The Indians wished that their children should grow up bald, 

 aside from scalp-locks. Their style of hair-cutting had been to 

 burn childish scalps with red hot stones. Hennepin's razor, 

 though none of the keenest, was clearly a better depilatory, and 

 so was hailed as a miracle of mercy, 



Nicollet met in council four thousand Wisconsin warriors, who 

 feasted on six score of beaver. He appeared before them in a 

 many-colored robe of state, adorned with flowers and birds. 

 Approaching with a pistol in each hand, he fired both at once. 

 The natives hence named him "thunder-bearer." Such a spec- 

 tacular display was in keeping with the policy which marked the 

 old French regime in two worlds, and which for centuries proved 

 equally sovereign in both. The apotheosis of Nicollet would 

 have been complete if he could have carried a Colt revolver — 

 the thunderbolt of Jove in the thimble of Minerva, omnipotent 

 as ever, yet so small that Cupid would steal it, as no longer too 

 heavy for him to lift or too hot for him to handle. 



Of all Europeans the French only gained the affections of 

 natives. From the beginning they fraternized with them as the 

 British never could. 



They never sold Indian captives for slaves on southern planta- 

 tions as the English did. Through hatred of New Englanders 

 fifty families of Indians there flying west became retainers of La 

 Salle, and some of them were his most trusty oarsmen and braves 

 in discovering the Mississippi. Four score years, said La Salle, 

 have we had Indian allies. Never has one of them proved false 

 to France. We can safely trust them with arms. From first to 

 last the Illinois tribes were faithful to the French. When the 

 French, after their loss of Illinois, went west of the Mississippi 

 in 1763, the Indians followed them. Each tribe loved the French 

 with an affection so ardent as to be jealous, and strove to keep 

 them all to itself, resenting their dealing with any other tribe as a 

 sort of adulterous infidelity. For a score of years Nicholas 



