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

280 HENNEPIN AMONG THE SIOUX. [1681.authorities, convoked the chiefs to a council, andurged them to set at liberty certain Ottawa prisonerswhom they had captured in violation of treaties.Having settled this affair to his satisfaction, he wentto Fort Frontenac, where his brother missionary,Buisset,received him with a welcome rendered thewarmer by a story which had reachedIndianshim that thehad hanged Hennepin with his own cord ofSt. Francis.From Fort Frontenac he went to Montreal; andleaving his two men on a neighboring island, thatthey might escape the payment of duties on a quantityof furs which they had with them, he paddled alonetowards the town. Count Frontenac chanced to behere, and, looking from the window of a house nearthe river, he saw approaching in a canoe a Re*colletfather, whose appearance indicated theextremity ofhard service; for his face was worn and sunburnt,and his tattered habit of St. Francis was abundantlypatched with scraps of buffalo-skin. When at lengthhe recognized the long-lost Hennepin, he receivedhim, as the father writes, "with all the tendernesswhich a missionary could expect from a person of hisrank and quality."He kept him for twelve days inhis own house, and listened with interestto such ofhis adventures as the friar saw fit to divulge.And here we bid farewell to Father Hennepin."Providence," he writes, "preserved my life that Imight make known my great discoveries to theworld." He soon after went to Europe, where the