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EDITED BY John C. Parish
Associate Editor of the State Historical Society of Iowa
| Volume II |
June 1921 |
No. 6 |
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Copyright 1921 by the State Historical Society of Iowa
(Transcribed by Gayle Harper)
MICHEL ACO -- SQUAW
MAN
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The history of white men in the Upper Mississippi Valley
runs back approximately two hundred and fifty years; and even
in the first distant quarter century of that long period there
are figures which stand out clear and distinct against the
background of prairie and stream and forest. High lights rest
upon the black gown of Marquette and upon the energetic
explorer Joliet, upon the restless La Salle, full of visions,
and upon Henri de Tonty with his iron hand. The Jesuit Allouez
passes from village to village, and the mendacious Friar
Hennepin moves about in the foreground.
The background
of the picture is indistinct. One gets glimpses, among the
dusky Indian camps, of bearded Frenchmen bartering for the
peltry of the region. One sees them again packing canoes over
portages or joining the Indians in the hunt or occasionally on
the war path. One even sees, now and then, among the more
southern tribes, a man naked and tattooed who once was a
Frenchman but has reverted to the life of the wilds.
They are the lesser breed who follow their leaders into the
West, or make their way apart. Some are faithful and fine
representatives of the land of the lilies, and some are only
knaves, but though as individuals their ways may be checkered
and their paths almost lost in the Valley, nevertheless they
deserve more than obscurity for they are France itself on the
far edge of the New World. The record of those early times, a
hundred years before the Revolutionary War, is voluminous. The
wandering priests made long reports to their superiors; the
explorers wrote many and detailed letter to their patrons and
friends, and beguiled numerous hours telling of the lands and
peoples they visited, the hardships they endured, and the
adventures of themselves and their comrades. So out of these
thousands of pages of records one can often piece together
into a somewhat connected whole the story of an obscure but
persistent priest, or the adventures of a French fur
trader—little known to fame—who trailed the woods and prairies
and paddled along the streams of the Upper Mississippi Valley
back in the time when Peter Stuyvesant with his wooden leg was
still stumping about the streets of the little village of New
York. Michel Aco— writers variously spell his name Accault,
Accau, and Ako, but Aco he himself signed it—came into the
Valley in the employ of La Salle. A vigorous and adventurous
fur trader and explorer, he appears again and again for nearly
a quarter of a century. And his experiences in the Valley and
his associations with its people were so vital and intimate
that they reflect vividly the life of both white and red
inhabitants.
When La Salle and Tonty made their
memorable trip into the Illinois country in the winter of
16791680 they brought with them a motley group of men. There
were priests and artisans, courageous woodsmen and arrant
cowards. Early in January, the party landed at the village of
the Peoria Indians. La Salle was on his way to the sea, but he
must make haste slowly. He commenced the building of a fort
below the Peoria village and beside it on the shore of the
Illinois River his men began the construction of a ship with a
forty-two foot keel and a twelve foot beam. With this he hoped
ultimately to reach the ocean at the mouth of the Mississippi
River.
In the meantime there were preliminary trips to
be made. La Salle determined to reconnoiter the upper
Mississippi, and on the last day of February, under his
directions, three men embarked in a canoe loaded with
provisions and trading goods and started down the Illinois
River. He had chosen Aco as leader of the expedition and with
him were Antoine Auguel, called by his comrades "the Picard"
because of his home in Picardy, and Friar Louis Hennepin,
gray-robed brother of the Recollect order.
Hennepin was
a man of big frame and high pretensions, and time was to show
that his boastfulness ran easily into mendacity. His account
is almost the only source of information about the important
voyage upon which he was embarking and as he chose to
represent himself as the leader of the expedition and to refer
to his companions as "my two men", the real position of Aco
has been much misunderstood.
But La Salle has been
sufficiently explicit in his writings as to Aco's leadership
and the reasons for his selection. He chose Aco to ascend the
Mississippi he said, because he was versed in the languages
and customs of the tribes which lay in that direction. He knew
not only the tongues of the Iroquois and the Illinois tribes
but he could talk with the Iowa, the Oto, the Chippewa, and
the Kickapoo. He had visited these Indians on La Salle's
orders and had been successful in his mission and well
received by the villagers. "Furthermore", said La Salle, "he
is prudent, courageous and cool."
In another letter La
Salle remarked that Aco had spent two winters and a summer
among these tribes. On the basis of these comments it is not
hard to identify Aco's experience. In the fall of 1678 La
Salle had sent out from Fort Frontenac—his post at the east
end of Lake Ontario—an advance party of fifteen men with
supplies and orders to proceed to the Illinois country, trade
for furs, and collect provisions. A year later when La Salle
himself arrived at Mackinac in the Griffon—the first ship on
the upper lakes—he found that his advance party had been sadly
demoralized. Some of the men were at Mackinac; some had
deserted and he sent Tonty to round them up at Sault Ste.
Marie; and some he found at the entrance to Green Bay. These
last had been doing some real trading and had collected a
quantity of furs which La Salle loaded upon the Griffon and
despatched on an unlucky voyage to Quebec. The ship and its
crew were never again heard from.
With his force
increased by the reassembled advance party La Salle had come
down into the Illinois country. It seems exceedingly probable
that the years of experience with Indian tribes which La Salle
credits to Aco came to him as one of the more faithful members
of the advance party of 1678. Even in Hennepin's biased
account there may be found indications of a sturdiness and
independence in Aco's character, but in what the friar says of
the Picard there is no evidence of such qualities. One only
gets the impression that the Picard was a timorous soul.
Such then were the three men who embarked in the spring of
1680 on an expedition into a largely unexplored country. They
found adventures almost at once. As they neared the mouth of
the Illinois River they spoke with a band of Tamaroas who
shortly afterward sought to ambush them from a jutting point
of land. But the smoke of the Indian camp fire gave them away
and the French were able to elude them.
Soon they were
pushing their canoe with difficulty up the current of the
Mississippi River. They were the first white travelers who are
known to have ascended the Mississippi River above the mouth
of the Illinois—for Marquette and Joliet seven years before
had turned aside into the Illinois River on their return trip;
and above the mouth of the Wisconsin they passed shores which
no French voyageur before them had seen and described.
As they paddled northward they feasted on the fat of the land.
There were wild turkeys to be had in abundance and they varied
their diet with fish and with the meat of buffalo and deer and
even with the flesh of a bear which they killed while it was
swimming across the river. It is impossible to tell just what
spots they visited on the Iowa and Illinois shores, but they
must have made many camps—by night to sleep and by day to hunt
and cook their food—for they were weeks upon the way.
One afternoon the three men were on shore, somewhere between
the mouth of the Wisconsin and Lake Pepin. Aco and the Picard
were cooking a wild turkey over a camp fire. Beside the
water's edge Hennepin was busy repairing the canoe, when he
looked up to see a fleet of thirty-three canoes full of
Indians coming rapidly down the stream. The Indians began to
let fly their arrows while they were some distance off, but
soon they caught sight of the upraised calumet in the hands of
Hennepin. Surrounding the Frenchmen, however, they took them
captives and after some parleying turned back up the river
with them toward their own country.
They were Sioux,
and Aco could not speak their language. La Salle had counted
on there being always an intermediary through whom Aco could
talk if he came upon an unfamiliar tongue, for the prevalence
among all Indian tribes of slaves or adopted members of other
tribes made it seem likely that Aco could find one whose
tongue he knew. But these warriors were all Sioux. The sign
language must serve, therefore, for the present, but it was
not long before Aco had added another Indian language to his
repertoire.
Up the Mississippi for nearly three weeks
the Indians and their captives paddled with few rests. For
many days the French constantly expected death at the hands of
the Sioux, and the stores of cloth and nails and pocket knives
with which they had hoped to buy furs were doled out in
increasing quantities to save their own skins. Not far from
the Falls of St. Anthony they left the river and struck out
across country to the Sioux villages in the Mille Lac region.
They traveled rapidly, too rapidly for the friar in spite of
his big frame, and he relates that to keep him going they set
fire to the grass behind him and then taking him by the hands
hurried him along in front of the flames. He was forced to
wade and swim the streams and break the thin ice sometimes
with his priestly shins, while Aco and the Picard being
smaller and unable to swim were carried over on the backs of
the Indians. One day they painted the face and hair of the
frightened Picard and forced him to sing and rattle a gourd
full of pebbles to keep time to his music.
As they
neared the villages, the bands prepared to separate; and the
three captives were parceled out each to a different village.
The Picard came to Hennepin for a last confession before they
parted, but Aco would have none of the friar's religious
offices. He apparently had not fared badly at the hands of the
Sioux and probably preferred their company to that of the
boastful friar.
The adventures of Aco while apart from
the friar have not been related. It was not many weeks before
the various bands came together again and Hennepin found the
Picard somewhat friendly but Aco still surly and aloof. The
friar secured permission to go down the Mississippi to the
mouth of the Wisconsin to look for messengers whom he said La
Salle had promised to send him at that point. The Picard
accompanied him, but Aco stayed with his new Indian friends
who were then just starting out upon a buffalo hunt.
No
word came from La Salle, but in the meantime another
Frenchman—the famous courier de bois Du Lhut—who with four
companions had come into the Sioux country from the region of
Lake Superior, had heard with astonishment reports from the
Indians as to the friar and his two companions He came to
investigate and late in the summer of 1680 he found the three
Frenchmen returning with their captors to the Sioux villages.
Du Lhut was a man of much influence with the Sioux and
made vigorous and wrathful protest when he learned how the
three men had been held during the summer. In fact he seems to
have ransomed them from their captivity; and together the
eight Frenchmen set out down the river bound for Canada. They
ascended the Wisconsin, crossed the portage into the Fox, and
made their way to the Mission of St. Ignace at Mackinac where
they spent the winter. In the spring, Aco and the Picard,
together with the friar, passed on eastward through the lakes.
At Fort Prontenac Hennepin was able to refute the story that
the Indians had hanged him with his own priestly cord. When
they approached Montreal, Aco and the Picard, having valuable
furs with them, took leave of the friar who entered the town
alone to recount his many adventures to Frontenac, the
Governor of New France.
It was now the summer of 1681.
For several years there appears no trace of Aco. He was not a
member of the party which with La Salle in 1682 paddled down
the Mississippi to the sea; nor was he with La Salle's
unfortunate expedition by sea from France to the Gulf of
Mexico. But the lure of the West brought him back to the
Valley of the Upper Mississippi, and he joined Tonty's forces
in the Illinois region. By the year 1694 he had evidently been
for some time in the Valley for he signed in that year a
statement drawn up by Tonty and the Illinois Indians to the
effect that since 1687 the Illinois had killed or made slaves
of 334 men and boys and 111 women and girls of the Iroquois
tribes.
But it was the preceding year which was perhaps
the most important in Aco's life. By 1693 he had become more
than a mere trader. He had apparently become a business
associate of Tonty and La Forest. After the death of La Salle,
his two faithful lieutenants, Tonty and La Forest, were
granted by the King of France a trading monopoly in the
Illinois region on the same conditions which had applied to
their leader. Thereupon Tonty, who had been commanding Fort
St. Louis on what was known later as Starved Rock' moved down
the Illinois River and built a new fort near the outlet of
Lake Peoria.
This fort—called also Fort St. Louis or
Fort Pimitoui—was the center of a busy fur trade, and
connected with this traffic was Michel Aco. That he was
successful is apparent, for there is still in existence an
ancient deed signed by La Forest and "M. Aco" by which the
former ceded to Aco one-half of his part of the trade monopoly
held by himself and Tonty. Aco was to pay for this concession
the sum of "six thousand livres in current beaver''.
The new Fort St. Louis was not only the center of fur trading
interests. Like most of the frontier French posts it was also
closely associated with Indian missionary enterprises, and
this fact became one of great significance to Aco. In the same
month of April that La Forest and Aco signed their deed of
sale, Father Jacques Gravier, a Jesuit priest who had been
long associated with Tonty, dedicated near the new fort a
chapel and beside it a cross which rose nearly thirty five
feet in the air. The French garrison at the fort fired four
volleys with their guns in honor of the occasion, and the
Indian looked on with interest as the black-robed priest
performed the ceremonies of sanctification.
The Indian
village, near which the fort and chapel had been placed, was
inhabited for the most part by the Peorias, but there were
also a good many Kaskaskias under the chief Rouensa. The
efforts of Gravier soon bore fruit. Rouensa was disinclined to
accept the teachings of the Jesuit, but the chief had a
daughter seventeen years old, who became a devout convert to
the faith of the French. She took for herself the name of
Mary, after the mother of the white men's Christ and in the
work of Father Gravier she became an enthusiastic helper.
And it so happened that as she went about from chapel to
village Michel Aco saw her and fell in love with her. He went
to the Kaskaskia chief, Rouensa, and asked for the hand of his
young daughter. Rouensa was delighted. What a fine son-in-law
this man would make. Here was no common Frenchman but a
woodsman of great renown, for fifteen years a wilderness rover
and a man after an Indian's own heart. Furthermore was he not
now a great white chief associated with Tonty and La Forest in
the control of the fur trade?
That Aco had led more or
less of a wild and reckless life meant little to Rouensa.
There was much of this recklessness among the French who spent
their years so far from the refinements of civilization and
Gravier at his chapel beside the Illinois found this a
handicap to the success of his mission. He had not found
encouraging response from the Indians in the village.
Particularly did the medicine men fear and hate him and oppose
his teachings. Every convert meant less power and influence
for them. If this priest's teachings spread, there soon would
be no call for them to suck from the body of the sick the
tooth of the evil spirit that plagued him. Soon their
incantations would be no more to the people of the tribe than
so much whistling of the wind among the lodges.
And so
they had questioned their people. "Why are not our traditions
good enough for you," they asked. "Leave these myths to the
people who come from afar. " And to the women they said: " Do
you not see how the white man's faith brings death to the
Indian? Have not your children died after this black-robed
priest has baptized them, Has this man better medicine than
we, that we should adopt his ways? His fables are good only
for his own country. We have our own and they do not make us
die."
Many there were who listened. Their children fell
ill. Gravier came to their cabins and sprinkled water upon
them. Their children died. Was it not his doing, They began to
fear his approach. One old woman whose grandchild was sick
drove the priest violently from her lodge lest he be the cause
of its death.
Slowly, however, Gravier made converts,
and the medicine men increased their warnings. Did not the
people know that the black-robed priest kept toads from which
he compounded poison for the sick! He even poisoned them with
the smell of toads whenever he approached. One of the old men
went through the village calling out "All ye who have hitherto
hearkened to what the black gown has said to you, come into my
cabin. I shall likewise teach you what I learned from my
grandfather and what we should believe. " So Gravier had much
opposition and many discouragements.
One day Father
Gravier received a visit from the chief Rouensa and his wife,
who brought with them their daughter and Aco who had sued for
her hand in marriage. The mission of the chief was soon told
but the interview did not end as he wished for Mary had risen
in revolt. She did not wish to marry. Her heart, she said, was
so full of love for the God of the white men, whose mother's
name she bore that there was no room for love of anybody else.
Entreaties proved useless, threats only increased her
determination. Rouensa appealed to the priest. Gravier replied
that God did not command her not to marry, but that she could
not be forced to do so. She alone must decide. Full of wrath
the chief departed, convinced that Gravier had prevented Mary
from agreeing to the marriage. And Aco, bitter in his
disappointment, blamed the priest with no less vigor because
he was a white man.
As was his custom Gravier walked
over to the village later in the day and passed among the
lodges calling the Indians to prayer at the chapel. As he
passed the lodge of Rouensa the enraged chief came out and
stopped him. "Inasmuch as you have prevented my daughter from
obeying me", he said, "I will prevent her from going to
chapel", and he continued to scold him and bar the way to
those who followed the priest.
Gravier returned to the
chapel and held his services. And there with the others,
responding to all the prayers and chants, was Mary. At the
close of the meeting she came to Gravier and said that her
father had driven her in wrath from his lodge. That night
Rouensa the Kaskaskia chief called together all the other
chiefs and told them that the black gown prevented marriages
between the French and the Indians; and he urged them to keep
their women and children from going to the chapel. Most of
them were ready enough to agree.
In spite of their
efforts there were fifty who gathered in the chapel the next
day and Mary was among them. The chiefs redoubled their
efforts and at the next service there were only about thirty
who gathered with Mary at Gravier's altar. Hardly had the
priest begun to chant the mass when a man entered armed with a
club. Seizing one of the worshippers by the arm he said to the
gathering:
"Have you not heard the chief's orders to obey
them and go out at once." The girl he seized stood fast.
Gravier walked up to him.
" Go out, thyself ", he said,
"and respect the house of God."
"The chief forbids them
to pray", spoke the man with the club. "And God commands them
to do so", replied the priest.
Finding his efforts in
vain, the man finally withdrew and the chants and prayer
continued. For two days Rouensa alternately wheedled and
threatened his daughter, and Aco joined in maligning the
priest.
"I hate him", said Mary of her suitor, "because he
always speaks ill of my father the black gown. "
But at the
end of two days she came to Gravier. " I have an idea ", she
said, " I think that if I consent to the marriage, my father
will listen to your words and will induce others to do so."
And Gravier agreed to her suggestion though he cautioned her
to make it clear to her parents that it was not their threats
which had brought about her consent.
She told her
parents of her new determination. And they and Aco came to the
chapel to find out from the priest if it were true. And so the
arrangements were made; and sometime apparently in the late
summer or early fall of 1693, the Indian maiden and the French
fur trader were married by Father Gravier according to the
rites and ceremonies of the Catholic church.
It might
be easy to draw the curtain here and assume that they lived
happily ever after. But Gravier's account in the Jesuit
Relations is so full of details that one is able to add much
to the account. The priest relates with great joy that Michel
Aco, moved by the gentleness, the innocence, and the devotion
of his wife, and ashamed that a young and almost uninstructed
child of the woods could teach him so much that was good, gave
up his evil ways. He hardly recognized himself, he told the
priest.
And the chief Rouensa and his wife, persuaded
by Mary and her husband, came asking to be baptized. It is
true that not long afterwards Mary found her mother, armed and
revengeful, setting out like an Amazon, in company with her
husband, to take death vengeance upon her brother who in a
spirit of anger had killed one of her slaves. "I shall go to
the church", she said, "if I am revenged". But even in the
face of this plain and evident call to the duty of vengeance,
the mother finally gave up to her daughter's entreaties, let
her brother go in peace and came to the black gown to confess.
The chief gave a great feast and announced his allegiance
to the priest and his teachings, and scores of his followers
came to be baptized at the wilderness chapel beside the fort
and the river. Mary helped the priest in teaching the children
and the mission flourished.
A register of baptisms in
the Kaskaskia mission completes the story of Aco and Mary. In
the year 1695 there was born in the village a half-French
papoose whom Father Gravier baptized on March 20, 1695, and to
whom the proud parents gave the name Pierre Aco. The records
show numerous entries in which Aco and Mary acted as godfather
and godmother at the baptism of children, and in 1702 the
records note the baptism of another child of Aco and Mary, a
son born on the 22nd of February and given the name Michel
after his father. With these records (which are themselves
beginnings) comes to an end the known history of Michel Aco,
Frenchman, and Mary Aramipinchicoue, Kaskaskia maiden.
JOHN C. PARISH
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