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Updated: May 12, 2025
But the night did not bring them, nor the next morning, nor the next day, nor yet the day following. And in the waiting days I lived in four camps of savages, and it was my duty to cover them with the robe of peace. The wolf-eyed Sacs, the stately Winnebagoes, the Chippewas, and Malhominis, they sat like gamecocks, quiet, but alert for a ruffle of one another's plumage.
"There is no danger," I said, with stupid brusqueness. "I am over-anxious. I bid you good-night, madame." I went to the Malhominis with haste pushing me, for I hoped for news of Starling. I pressed forward, yet I recoiled. There would be cross-threads to untangle when I met my wife's cousin. It was wonderful voyaging to the Malhominis.
From that on I gave the day to winning my special jailer. He was an intelligent Indian and inclined to be good-humored. I amused him, and when I took a net and motioned that we go to the swamp to fish he grunted and agreed. The swamp lay on the north of the camp, and was, I was sure, part of the great rice field on which the Malhominis had their village to the west.
In other times, in times before the broth of life had lost its salt, I should have enjoyed that moment of entry into the Malhominis camp. The cry that met me was of relief and welcome, but I ignored all greetings till I had pushed my way to the pole where the dried band of rushes still hung. I tore it away, and hung a silver chain in its place. "Brother!"
Cadillac was not in his first youth, and had abused himself. His look meant fatigue. "Ottawas, Hurons, Pottawatamies, Malhominis, Chippewas, Sacs, Winnebagoes." I counted them off to him. "Monsieur de la Mothe-Cadillac, it is a sight worthy your eyes. New France has not seen such a gathering since the day when Saint Lusson planted our standard at the straits and fourteen tribes looked on."
The Malhominis had been a proud race, now they were dwindled to this village of eighty braves. He crooned long tales of famine, of tribal bickerings, of ambuscade and defeat; his voice rustled monotonously like wind in dried grass. Then his tone rose. He spoke of the present, its possibilities. The Iroquois league was a scourge, a pestilence.
I knew this dimly, as the lost in the inferno know the barred joys above them. Unless we found Pemaou within the next few hours I should never be one with the loveliness of nature again. I held my way due west to the Malhominis. I could secure their cooperation, if nothing more. Pierre followed at a canoe length, and we traveled unbrokenly.
"We go to the land of the Malhominis, to the wild rice people. They live toward the south-west?" He nodded. "Across La Baye des Puants as the wild goose flies. Then down till you find the mouth of the wild rice river. But why go till another sunrise?" I hesitated. But I thought of the shadowing Huron, and decided that I could elude him best at night.
So my recital did not take me long. The gleam was still in Cadillac's eyes. "And, you think the western tribes would follow you now?" "They would have followed me a week ago." He heard something sinister in my reply. "You could have wiped out that Seneca camp," he meditated. "Yes, it could have been done." He gave me a look. "The Malhominis wished it?" "Yes." "And you thought it unwise?"
Five tribes dwelt around it: the Pottawatamies at its mouth, the Malhominis halfway down on its western shore, and the Sacs, the Chippewas, and the Winnebagoes scattered at different points in more transitory camps. To the east the bay was separated from Lake Illinois by a long peninsula that lay like a rough-hewn arrow with its point to the polestar.
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