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Another breathing space, and then the war-cry of the Puans broke hideously on the night, and children woke, crying, from their sleep. In two bounds our little detachment was in the street, the fire spouting red from the Deckards, faint, shadowy forms fading along the line of trees. After that an uproar of awakening, cries here and there, a drum beating madly for the militia.
But he was able to report to the governor all that he had seen and done. Marquette lay ill, at the Bay of the Puans, of dysentery, brought on by hardship; and he was never well again. Being determined, however, to go back and preach to the tribe on the Illinois River, he waited all winter and all the next summer to regain his strength.
Ignace became once more the starting point of an important expedition, though La Salle, before sending the Griffin back, sailed in her as far as the Bay of Puans, where many of his furs were collected. He parted with this good ship in September. She pointed her prow eastward, and he turned south with fourteen men in four canoes, carrying tools, arms, goods, and even a blacksmith's forge.
"Yes, Thérèse I remember everything connected with those old times at the Portage. Who among our people there are living?" "Only Manaigre is left," she said. "Mais, mais, Thérèse," interposed the old man, "Manaigre's daughter Geneviève is living." It was a comfort to find our visit of such miraculous benefit to his memory. "And the Puans are any of them left?" I asked.
The Menomonees, from the wild rice so abundant in their country, are called "Folles Avoines;" the Winnebagoes, from their custom of wearing the fur of a polecat on their legs when equipped for war, are termed "les Puans;" the Pottowattamies, from their uncleanly habits, "les Poux;" the Foxes are "les Renards," etc. etc.
"If true tales be told of the water around the Bay of the Puans," one of the voyageurs was heard to say as he stretched himself under the canoe allotted to the men, "we may save our salt when we pass that country." "Have you ever heard, Father," Jolliet inquired of the missionary, "that the word Puan meant foul or ill-smelling instead of salty?"
Another breathing space, and then the war-cry of the Puans broke hideously on the night, and children woke, crying, from their sleep. In two bounds our little detachment was in the street, the fire spouting red from the Deckards, faint, shadowy forms fading along the line of trees. After that an uproar of awakening, cries here and there, a drum beating madly for the militia.
At the end of a voyage of thirty leagues, or about ninety miles, the explorers reached the head of the Bay of Puans, and a region thickly settled with Winnebagoes and Pottawotomies between the bay and Winnebago Lake, Sacs on Fox River, and Mascoutins, Kickapoos, and Miamis. Fox River, which they followed from the head of the bay, and of which the lake seemed only an expansion, was a rocky stream.
When, after days of steady progress, the expedition entered the Bay of Puans, now called Green Bay, and found the nation of Menomonies or Wild Oats Indians, Marquette was as much interested as Jolliet in the grain which gave these people their bread. It grew like rice, in marshy places, on knotted stalks which appeared above the water in June and rose several feet higher.
From the remote forests of the north they had come, where the cold winds blow off the blue lakes; from the prairies to the east; from the upper running waters, where the Mississippi flows clear and undefiled by the muddy flood; from the villages and wigwams of the sluggish Wabash; and from the sandy, piny country between the great northern seas where Michilimackinac stands guard alone, Sacs and Foxes, Chippeways and Maumies and Missesogies, Puans and Pottawattomies, chiefs and medicine men.
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