Page:The story of Illinois (IA Storyofillinois00peas).djvu/30

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obtained in the partially understood language of the savages among whom he was. Its ambiguity is provoking. The sea may be the " Big Water" of the Indians, the Mississippi; Nicolet may have failed to understand his hosts as saying that three days off was a stream that would lead to it; but at all events the phrase shows how present in men's thoughts was the western sea.

Nicolet's discoveries were not followed up for twenty years. The scourge of the Iroquois fell heavily upon the struggling colony of New France. Their confederation in which the fraternal clans of the same totem throughout the five tribes linked the whole in close alliance was famous for prowess and savagery in war. The Jesuits, strong in unquestioning military obedience to superiors, in the education, the devotion, and the intelligence of their fathers had aspired to do in New France what they had done in Paraguay; to gather round Jesuit priests villages of Indians to be instructed in the faith, and to be made adept and obedient pupils of their spiritual guides alike in the concerns of war and peace. Their work had begun among the Hurons, when in 1648 and 1649 ^ e Iroquois fell upon their villages and amid their slaughtered converts Jesuit fathers gained the crown of martyrdom. The remnant of the Hurons fled from the eastern shore of their lake to the forests beyond Superior,