82 THE FORMER RANGE OF THE BUFFALO. 
which, in the form of disease, was laying waste the village, the 
medicine-man was forced to bow his knee to the cross and offer up 
his prayer for mercy to the great Manitou of the French. Here 
these old Jesuit Relations and Letters we see the Red-man on 
bended knee before the blessed virgin, reciting the rosary or te 
peating Ave Marias translated into the Algonquin language by the 
Jesuit fathers. a 
The Jesuit missionary, Father Marquette, who, with Joliet and 
five French voyageurs, discovered and explored the Upper Mis 
Sissippi, in the year 1673, was the first white man who penetrated 
to the habitat of the buffalo, by way of the Great Lakes. Fathet 
Claude Alloiiez and other missionaries, who had penetrated the 
wilderness as far as Che-goi-me-gon, a great Chippewa Village & 
the extreme west end of Lake Superior, no doubt had heard feof 
the wandering Sioux, or as they were known in those days, the 
Nadouessi, of the great plains that lay farther westward and 
the vast herds of buffaloes that roamed over them. History, i- 
deed, records the fact, that these Sioux Indians told the $ pe 
pale-faces that came among them with “ pictures of hell and of the 
last judgment” of their manner of shielding themselves from tN 
winter's storm with the hides of wild-cattle for the roof of their cah 
ins instead of bark. It was here, too, that the missionaries heart 
of the Great River, and here, for the first time in history, 
those two Algonquin words, Messi-Sepe. Father Alloiiez, in spe 
ing of the Sioux Indians says, “ They live on the great river cafe 
Messipi.” He blended the adjective Messi, great, and the nout 
Sepe, river, into the word Messipi, which was no greater © 
tion of the original than our Missis-sippi. It was here, t00, "8 
Father Marquette received tidings of the Great River, and " 
tions that dwelt upon its banks, and it was here that he resolve 
explore it. ‘‘This great river,” he says, “can hardly empty 
Virginia, and we believe that its mouth is in California. 4 
Indians who promise to make me a canoe do not fail to eee 
word, we shall go into this river as soon as we can with 4 re 
man and this young man given me, who knows some of these ® 
guages, and has a readiness for learning others; we shall vi 
nations which inhabit it, in order to open the way to 8° many 
our fathers who have long awaited this happiness.” * 
_ At the same Chippewa Village, the Jesuits met the Tilinos 
* Marquette’s Letter to Le Mercier. 
