Page 5 - Fur Trade program Curriculum

coolness, took possession of the small camp he had found, shouting into the darkness
that he was about to sleep in his bed; and laid down and slept until morning.

LaSalle’s Mohegan guide had rejoined the party before LaSalle’s return and with his
aid the portage was soon found. Here the party camped. LaSalle, who was fatigued,
created and occupied, together with Hennepin, a wigwam covered in the Indian manner
with mats of reeds. The cold forced them to start a fire, which before daybreak set the
mats in a blaze; and the two sleepers narrowly escaped being burned along with their
hut.

In the morning the party shouldered their canoes and baggage and began their
march for the sources of the Illinois River, some five miles away. Around them
stretched a desolate plain, half covered with snow, and strewn with the skull and bones
of buffalo; while, on its farthest verge, they could see the lodges of the Miami Indians,
who had made this place their home. They soon reached a spot where the oozy,
saturated soil quaked beneath their feet. All around were clumps of alder bushes, tufts
of rank grass and pools of water. In the midst, a dark and lazy current, which a tall man
might walk, crept twisting like a snake among the weeds and rushes. Here were the
sources of the Kankakee, one of the heads of the Illinois. They set their canoes on this
thread of water, embarked their baggage and themselves and pushed down the
sluggish current of water.