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

1682.] THE TAENSAS. 301river. 1 Here, as their two guides told them, wasthe path to the great town of the Taensas. Tontyand Memore* were sent to visit it. They and theirmen shouldered their birch canoe through the swamp,and launched it on a lake which had once formed aportion of the channel of the river. In two hours,they reached the town; and Tonty gazed at it withastonishment. He had seen nothing like it inAmerica, — large square dwellings, built of sunbakedmud mixed with straw, arched over with adome-shaped roof of canes, and placed in regularorder around an open area. Two of them werelarger and better than the rest. One was the lodgeof the chief; the other was the temple, or house ofthe Sun. They entered the former, and found asingle room, forty feet square, where, in the dimlight, — for there was no opening but the door, — thechief sat awaiting them on a sort of bedstead, threeof his wives at his side ;while sixty old men, wrappedin white cloaks woven of mulberry-bark, formed hisdivan. When he spoke, his wives howled to dohim honor; and the assembled councillors listenedwith the reverence due to a potentate for whom, athis death, a hundred victims were to be sacrificed.He received the visitors graciously, and joyfully1 In Tensas County, Louisiana. Tonty's estimates of distanceare here much too low. They seem to be founded on observationsof latitude, without reckoning the windings of the river. It mayinterest sportsmen to know that the party killed several large aliigators, on their way. Membre is much astonished that such monstersshould be born of eggs like chickens.