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

206 INDIAN CONQUERORS. [1680.saw no palisades, no cabins, no sign of human hand,and still its primeval crest of forests overhung thegliding river. Now the meadow opened before themwhere the great town had stood. They gazed, astonishedand confounded: all was desolation. Thetown had vanished, and the meadow was black withfire. ^They plied their paddles, hastened to the spot,landed ; and as they looked around their cheeks grewwhite, and the blood was frozen in their veins.Before them lay a plain once swarming with wildhuman life and covered with Indian dwellings, nowa waste of devastation and death, strewn with heapsof ashes, and bristling with the charred poles andstakes which had formed the framework of thelodges. At the points of most of them were stuckhuman skulls, half picked by birds of prey. 1 Nearat hand was the burial-ground of the village. Thetravellers sickened with horror as they entered itsrevolting precincts. Wolves in multitudes fled attheir approach; while clouds of crows or buzzards,rising from the hideous repast, wheeled above theirheads, or settled on the naked branches of the neighboringforest. Every grave had been rifled, andthe bodies flung down from the scaffolds where, afterthe Illinois custom, many of them had been placed.The field was strewn with broken bones and torn and1" II ne restoit que quelques bouts de perches brule'es qui montroientquelle avoit ete l'e'tendue du village, et sur la plupart desquellesil y avoit des tStes de morts plantees et mangees des copbeaux-" — Relation des Decouverte$ du Sr -d« la Sail*.