La Salle and the discovery of the great West - North Central ...

1680.] INDIAN ALARMS."195man on guard waked us, and we posted ourselvesbehind trees with our guns, these savages, who arecalled Wapoos, took us for Iroquois, and thinkingthat there must be a great many of us because wedid not travel secretly, as they do when in smallbands, they ran off without shooting their arrows,and gave the alarm to their comrades, so that wewere two days without meeting anybody."La Salle guessed the cause of their fright; and, inorder to confirm their delusion, he drew with charcoal,on the trunks of trees from which he hadstripped the bark, the usual marks of an Iroquoiswar-party, with signs for prisoners and for scalps,after the custom of those dreaded warriors. Thisingenious artifice,as will soon appear, was near provingthe destruction of the whole party. He also setfire to the dry grass of the prairies over which he andhis men had just passed, thus destroying the tracesof their passage. "We practised this device everynight, and it answered very well so long as we werepassing over an open country; but on the thirtiethwe got into great marshes, flooded by the thaws, andwere obliged to cross them in mud or water up tothe waist; so that our tracks betrayed us to a bandof Mascoutins who were out after Iroquois. Theyfollowed us through these marshes during the threedays we were crossing them; but we made no fire atnight, contenting ourselves with taking off our wetclothes and wrapping ourselves in our blankets onsome dry knoll, where we slept till morning. At