Excerpt from: Wolves Against the Moon - Chapter XXVII

Source: Chapter XXVII. “Wolves Against the Moon” (out of print)

(Trail Creek, Michigan City, Indiana, July 15, 1821) Pages 369-380

From the book “Wolves Against the Moon” by Julia Cooley Altrocchi
Author of “Snow Covered Wagons”
New York: The MacMillan Company, 1944

Book Preface
“This story of an adventurous Frenchman on the old Northwest frontier and is based in part on the brief family chronicle by Joseph Bailly’s granddaughter, Frances R. Howe, The Story of a French Homestead in the old Northwest (Press of Nitschke Bros., Columbus, Ohio, 1907, 165 pp.), and on references in early documents. The scant biographical material has been expanded and cast in the form of a novel…” - Transcriber, Russell A. Hapke, MA Archaeologist

Chapter XXVII

WOLVES AGAINST THE MOON

“Warr a minute! Oh, Papa, please wait! The moon’s coming up over that great big dune that hasn’t any trees on it! I want to watch!”

“But we must be getting on to the camping place, Robert. All good travelers try to camp before dark. We’re late. I’ll give you three minutes. Then, en avant, marche! On we go!”

“How quiet it is! Just that little ripple of the lake – and those wolves baying, Papa. They’re so near. Should we be afraid?”

“No, Robert. A big hungry pack of them in the winter might be dangerous, but not those two you hear. Those aren’t the big timber wolves anyway. Those are the dune wolves, half timber, half prairie. Wolves are shrewd animals, but we mustn’t be afraid – of anything.”

The Bailly cavalcade had stopped on the beach, at the edge of Rivere du Chemin, which, as Trail Creek, winds today through Michigan City, Indiana. Two great dunes stood guarding the entrance of the river, one at the south covered with pines, one at the north, a barren moving dune. It was early evening of the 15^th of July, 1821.

Joseph had taken another step forward in his shrewdly advancing career. He was about to settle at last on the banks of the long anticipated and insufficiently exploited Little Calumet River, forty miles from Checagou – “forty miles from Skunktown,” as Louis Pettle would have put it – and to trade with and help the Indians according to his and Marie’s vows. The Bailly house at Mackinac Island had been turned over to the custody of Agatha and Edward Biddle, the needed household furniture and utensils for farming, trapping, and trading were to be shipped down in September, in the care of Toussiant Pothier, on the same schooner that was to carry the autumn supplies to Fort Dearborn.

Joseph believed that he was entering Michigan Territory, the southern tip of the peninsula he loved so well, and that the site of his new home was to bear that same name of pleasant association. (But the later surveys of the recently created State of Indiana were to shunt the boundary of the old ordinance of 1787, ten miles north of the southernmost shore of Lake Michigan, in order that the new state might be given a bite of the Lake and its potential harbors. In this strip, then, of the future Indiana, Joseph was placing his destiny.)

Joseph was not at all unaware of the strategic position of the site, at the end of the great old Indian Trail coming up from the Ohio River and the Wabash, crossed at right angles by the important Sauk Trail from the Missouri to Malden, Canada, and lying close to the irresistibly impending developments of white settlement at Fort Wayne, Checagou, and Detroit.

Joseph, in all probability, considered these things as well as the harbor potentialities of the mouth of Trail Creek itself, as he paused on that midsummer evening of 1821 to humor the whim of his son. Robert sat in front of his father, on the saddle of Veillantif, the beautiful chestnut Arab which was the third successor to Bayrad. Marie and Rose were mounted on fine black Arabs. The rest of the group rode Canadian ponies – Esther, Lucille, Jean Baptiste Clutier, Magama, and two Indian menservants. Several pack horses led by the servants brought up the rear of the little procession. Therese was not with the group. She had, at her own request, been sent to a Catholic school in Quebec rather than to the Philadelphia boarding school which her father would have preferred for her.

“Oh, look, look!” cried Robert. “How fast the moon comes! It’s almost over the dune. Oh, it’s so beautiful I can hardly stand it! La beaute m’inonde!”

Joseph and Marie exchanged a significant parental glance across their horses’ heads. Of all their children, Rovert, more than any other, inherited their own and Genevieve Bailly’s feeling for the beauty of out-of-doors. Therese had something of it, refined into a mystic essence that lay beyond the borders of the sensuous. Roes had it, in a pagan, exuberant, riotous way. Esther was entirely an indoors, doll-playing, spinning, domestic little person, and Lucille seemed entirely without feeling for nature, people, or animals; for anything except dramatic situations and her own physical comfort (which could always be enhanced by any discomfort which she might be able to create in the situation of those in her immediate vicinity). This latter peculiarity Joseph had recently begun to observe; but when he had once suggested its existence to Marie she had denied it with such passionate maternal protectiveness that he had subsided into solitary conviction. It was Rovert who seemed to combine all the qualities that Joseph and Marie most admired and had scarcely dared to hope for in their only son: sensitiveness of nature, strength of character, warmth of heart, sturdiness of body. He looked more like Marie as he grew older (he was five at this time), though his eyes and his chin were his father’s. He had that faintly Italianate look that Marie had: the exquisitely oval face, delicate nose, very pale olive skin, finely penciled dark eyebrows love over the deep-set eyes. The eyelashes were still very long and starry like Marie’s, casting rayed shadowsn on the cheeks. The hair was still brownish black, not the Indian blue black of Marie’s, and was not as thick as hers. It curled slightly at the temples and the nape of the neck. There was the glow of intelligence over the whole fine little face.

The little group were beginning to get restless, and attention was wandering to the gilded lake or to horses’ bridles and reins when Robert cried again, in a loud whisper:

“Look now, everybody! Look!”

Everyone turned to see what the child was indicating, and remained motionless in surprise. Two wolves, to whose nostrils the west wind had carried the smell of man, had come to the summit of the barren dun to investigate. As they paused, alert and watchful, their lean, dark bodies were silhouetted, for one perfect moment, against the golden disc of the full moon. The coincidence and the picture were so unusual that no one moved of made a comment. Then the wolves vanished as if they had been a dream. A horse snorted suspiciously. Joseph dug his heel into his Arab’s flank, shook the reins, and the procession turned landwards up the north bank of Trail Creek, where many Indian moccasins and many ponies’ hooves had grooved a path. After several minutes, Joseph said:

“There’s a fording-place three miles east of here, and a Potawatomi encampment. We can probably camp near there for the night. Best to make friends with our new neighbors. I haven’t seen them for two years. It’s an Indian village, Robert, so old that there are Indian mounds there, no man knows how ancient. And the Indians there will tell you how Father Marquette camped with their great-grandfathers a hundred and fifty years ago on the very spot where we shall probably spend the night. You see, there is a beautiful spring there, as old as time, and salt licks near by. The Indians still call the spring Marquette Spring and believe that its water is ‘good medicine.’”

“Then Father Marquette must have gone along this very path, didn’t he, Papa?”

“Yes. Or else he paddled up this very river in his canoe. This all interesting country. Big battles were fought near here too, only forty years or so ago, in the Revolution.”

“Are there any battle places near our new home?”

“Oh yes, indeed!” There was an old French palisaded fort near the shore, not far from where we’re going to be. And there were battles there too, battles between Pontiac and the British, between the Spanish and the Americans and between the British and the Americans. And there are many Indian mounds there too. It’s a wonderfully interesting place, Robert, and very beautiful. I smell smoke, do you? The smoke of Indian campfires!”

“Not yet. Your nose is so much better than mine, Papa! Is that because it’s bigger?”

“No. Just older, son. Just older and wiser,” answered Joseph, laughing.

Back of the ridge of dunes, there was marshy country; but the path along the river embankment was close-packed and firm. About four miles from the shore, the flat marshes were relieved by a few low, wooded glacial mounds and the lower mounds made by the prehistoric Indians, giving an overturned-bowl effect to the landscape. The contours showed darkly against the moonlight. The marsh stars, the fireflies, flashed faintly but continuously. The wisps of smoke from Indian campfires could be smelled rather than seen. When Joseph was within a quarter of a mile of the camp, he gave the friendly halloo call, which Jean Baptiste and the two Indian men echoed long and loudly. By the time they came into camp, there was a bustle of preparation for the guests. Two or three of the headmen had come out to the edge of the encampment knoll to welcome the travelers into camp, and the squaws were hastily piling new wood on the fires to reheat the left-over corn soup and boiled deer meat for their refreshment, for Joseph had been immediately recognized and every hospitable effort was made to make him and his family feel at home. He noted at once, with pleasure, that the scenes of drunkenness so frequent at Indian camps were lacking tonight. Evidently no trader had passed through for some time. The squaws, overcome with interest in the feminine members of the Bailly household, helped Marie and her daughters to dismount, and passed their hands over every bit of the guests’ cloths, hair, hats, ribbons, and ornaments, as if the sense of touch were the gateway to some kind of possession. Marie noticed, almost immediately, a young girl in Indian dress, standing motionless as a tree and consuming the proceedings with eyes that burned with curiosity. The fire haloed her with light and showed her hair to be pure gold.

Within fifteen minutes, Jean Baptiste and the three Indian servants, at the insistence of the headmen of the Potawatomi, had set up tepee shelters for the night, at the edge of the Indian encampment, and the entire Bailly family were seated around the campfire pots.

It was only then that Joseph also noticed the golden-haired girl. She was busying herself with the other squaws in handing out gourd-dishes of hot soup and deer meat. She never said a word, but paused for a second in front of each successive guest, consuming each white face with her great, searching, brown eyes. When she came to Joseph, he asked her, in Potawatomi, what her name was.

“Ne-wa-quir,” she answered, in the same language.

“The only name?”

“Squaw of Op-wa-gun.”

“This is a very pleasant village, isn’t it?

“Yes. Very nice.”

“You like it?”

“Yes, I like it.”

“You speak French or English too?”

“No.”

The girl dropped her glance, whether from fear or the effort of protective prevarication or from some vague, deeply stirred memory, Joseph could not tell. He was, of course, certain that she had been taken in some Indian raid, but whether as an infant, with no memories of paleface life at all, or as a child with troubled recollection, he could not guess, although he felt inclined toward the latter surmise. Certainly, she spoke Algonquin as if she had always spoken it. She wore the blue calico short gown of the Potawatomi women, the blue broadcloth leggings, exquisite flower-beaded moccasins, armlets, bracelets, and earbobs. Evidently the young brave who had married her was eager to cover her with many solid symbols of his esteem. The girl’s face was painted with two bright spots of vermilion, and the golden hair was drawn, Indian style, in two thick braids over her bosom. She was not a pretty girl. Her nose was too large and her mouth too wide. But her hair and her hazel eyes were conspicuously fine. Joseph decided that, like nine out of ten of the captive palefaces, the girl was happier with her adopted people than she could ever be in returning again to the suffocating life of a stationary plantation of white relatives. Nevertheless, he was vaguely uneasy about her and more than eager to know from where she had come. He was concentrating on this particular anxiety when, far in the distance, came the halloo of greeting which he had himself given half an hour before. Other travelers too who had not yet settled down for the night? Strange. Most wayfarers, white or Indian, of course made camp before the sun went down. This country was marshy and difficult, besides, and there were many giant bears and pumas, wild cats, coyotes, and wolves roaming about, between whom and all travelers it was just as well to place the barricade of fire before nightfall. But the full moon had rolled up over the marshes to the east and was spilling through the oak trees. It was yet very light along the trail.

Again the Indians began to simmer with imminent hospitality. The Bailly household had evidently emptied the soup pot. Another bark pail was filled with water from Marquette Spring, and twenty or so Lake Michigan perch were quickly scraped and thrown into the pot, heads, fins, tails, and all.

It was ten minutes before the new visitors climbed the low wooded mound to the brink of the encampment. An Indian on ponyback came first, greeted the headman with signs and guttural speech, and announced the coming of the white cavalcade which he was guiding through the wilderness. The Indian was followed by a lanky man on horseback whose feet almost touched the ground, and whose slouched, disappointed-dreamer contour suggested to Joseph an engraving of Don Quixote that he had seen years before in a volume in the priest’s house at Quebec. Two small children rode on the saddle against the concave arch of their father’s front. Then came a younger, stiffer man with two more children riding on his saddle. Then a fellow, poorly clothed, who might be a servant, and a woman draped in a long mantle which fell party way over the horse’s sides after enclosing in its ample folds a tiny child held in the mother’s left arm. Finally, on two mangy horses at the end of the line, two boys of about eleven and thirteen rode in, driving a dozen cows and half a dozen pigs. It was not until the long, lanky man descended from his horse and shook the hands of the head chief, announcing in a cavernous, vibrant, pastoral voice, “Name’s McCoy, Reverend McCoy,” that Joseph recognized the Baptist missionary to the Indians, Reverend Isaac McCoy, whom he had seen at Terre Haute several times on his journeys to and from Vincennes.

‘Well, how do you do, McCoy!” he exclaimed heartily, rising from his place.

The white Indian girl, Ne-wa-quir, was on the point of handing Joseph a second plateful of soup. As he rose, she dropped it, spattering his trousers and his arms and hands with the hot liquid. Two of the squaws came over and began a noisy tirade against the girl.

“Never mind! Never mind!” protested Joseph. “It’s all right. Leave her alone. It wasn’t her fault. I got up too suddenly.”

Joseph strode over to McCoy and greeted him and his family cordially, then presented his own family. At last the McCoy household was seated with the Baillys, in an immense circle around the campfires. The squaws began to pass around the bark dishes of soup and fish. Ne-wa-quir came to McCoy. He looked up at her casually as he was taking his hunting knife from his belt, and paused in mid-gesture. Ne-wa-quir looked back at him with deep, troubled eyes.

“Good evening, my child,” said McCoy, in English.

The girl did not answer.

“Good evening, my child,” repeated McCoy in Algonquin.

“Good evening.”

“Won’t you sit down beside me? I think I could find a little present for you somewhere in my pocket, if you’d sit down.”

The missionary fumbled in his trousers pockets, brought out a tw-yard strip of scarlet ribbon and haded it to the girl.

“Me-gwuck, She-mo-ke-mon” (Thank you, white man), said Ne-wa-quir, still standing.

McCoy took the dish of soup and placed it on the ground in front of him.

“Do sit down. There may be more pretty things in my pockets.”

In the light of the campfire, two persons watched intently: Joseph, sitting on the right of McCoy, and a young brave leaning with casual curves against a tree, but with every nerve taut – the husband of Ne-wa-quir, who had bought his bride of a band of Shawnee the year before and had never had occasion to see her with a group of palefaces before. McCoy moved closer to Joseph, and Ne-wa-quir sat down on his left.

“Now, let’s see what else we can find.”

McCoy rummaged in his pockets a minute longer, and drew out a silver thimble, which he handed to Ne-wa-Quir. Again, she repeated the formula:

“Me-gwuck, She-mo-ke-mon. Me-gwuck.”

Then McCoy, mindful of the repast and of his benedictional duty, rose to his feet and, in a hollow, sermonic voice, called for silence. Several repetitions of his pious admonition were necessary before the chattering of squaws and the squeaks and laughter of children, both white and red, were silenced. Then he bowed his head and, in Algonquin, spoke the grace:

“Great Father of all men. We thank Thee for this food that Thou hast prepared on Thy wilderness table for us, and we thank Thee for the peace and friendship of all these people who have gathered on this little hilltop to eat together. Bless this food, and bless all these Thy people, the white and the red. Thy will be done forever and ever. Amen.”

McCoy sat down again. Ne-wa-quir was looking at him intently.

“You come from where?” she asked.

‘From Terre Haute, my child,” he answered. “A long way from here, to the south.” Then in the same tone, level and casual, he asked: “And you, where do you come from?”

‘From – here.”

“But not always from here. Where, before here?”

“From – along way to the south – where the Shawnee live.”

McCoy looked up quickly from his soup. His eyes widened, with a sudden thought from the far back of his mind.

“And – before that?”

“Before that?” The girl’s eyes wavered.

“Yes – before that, child? Tell me, tell me what you remember.”

Ne-wa-quir lowered her eyes and her voice.

“I remember – I remember – a hilltop – with big wooden house with two towers – where there were men with guns – and wooden houses – and thousands of pigeons roosting – “

‘Let me look at you child. Let me look at you!”

McCoy set down his dish, seized Ne-wa-quir by the wrists, and searched her painted face. At last he spoke, and his deep voice trembled:

“Ginsey! Ginsey McCoy!”

A tall, earth-colored young man stood suddenly over McCoy. Joseph rose quickly and spoke to the young Indian, restraining him by the arm.

“It’s all right. It’s all right! The man happens to be kin and friend of your squaw. But he’s not going to try to take her away. Don’t worry. I’m your friend. Here!”

Joseph placed several pieces of shining silver in the young branve’s hand. The brown fingers closed over them with the ferocity with which they would willingly have shut over McCoy’s throat or a tomahawk handle a moment before. The brave returned to his tree to watch, with smoldering eyes.

The dazed look in Ne-wa-quir’s eyes was clearing little by little, like mist before the sun of dawn.

“McCoy…McCoy…Ginsey McCoy…Yes, that was it. That was it! …I’ve been trying to remember that name for years. Then, when you came tonight – something happened way back in those caves in my head. Something stirred – like a little fox – in a den…Yes – I remember…I remember more now. I remember a tall man, tall like you - and a woman with kind arms. I remember how their bodies looked that day – like porcupines, with arrows stuck in all over them. I remember – everything…”

“Do you remember me, Ginsey? I’ve seen you only twice, once when you were two years old, once when you were four, just before the Shawnee came.”

“I almost – think- I do. Was it you who brought me a little French doll with a pink dress? You must be related to me. Are you?”

“I’m your father’s brother, Ginsey. I’m your Uncle Isaac. And I brought you the doll from Vincennes. I’m so happy to find you again. Will you come home with me – be my daughter?”

“Oh no, no, I couldn’t! I have a husband. This is my home.”

“Are you happy here?”

“Oh yes, I’m very happy. I’m happy to be what I am. But I’m so glad to know now who I was!”

“Will you come and visit me, then, some time? I’m going to live at Fort Wayne.”

“Yes.”

“Say, ‘Yes, Uncle Isaac.’ “

“Yes, Uncle Isaac.”

“I remember you when you were just as tiny as those children over there.”

McCoy nodded across at a little group of Indian children, who had begun to dance around the fading campfires, reaching out their arms as if to catch something forever escaping them, and singing the firefly song of the Chippewa and Potawatomi. Even in the flicker of the campfires and the pour of the moonlight through the trees, the countless fireflies flashing back and forth on the mound top could be plainly seen, the inspiration of the children’s song. The only white child to join the group was Robert Bailly, whose mother had taught him the song long before, and who loved it with all his heart. Joseph watched the joy of his gestures and of his face as he danced and sang with the Indian children, and rejoiced that his child, like himself, was equally at home with the red people and the white:

Wau wau tay see!

Wau wau tay see!

E mow e shin

Tshe bwan ne bann-e-wee

Be-eaghaun-be-eaghaun ewee!

Wa Wau tay see!

Wa Wau tay see!

Was sa koon ain je gun

Was sa koon ain je gun.

Dancing light fireflies,

Glancing bright fireflies

Little white lightnings over my head,

Come fly before me and light me to bed!

Dreaming white glowworms,

Gleaming bright glowworms,

Wings of the night-things over the grass

Give me the flames of our stars as I pass!

“Is that your son, that little fellow over yonder, dancing with the Indian children?” asked McCoy.

“Yes, that’s my son, “ answered Jospeh proudly.

‘Fine little boy! I’ve lost three sons.”

“Lost three sons! My God, how do you endure it?” asked Joseph, with sudden gigantic compassion.

‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” answered McCoy, deep in the throat, in the monotonous tone of pious acquiescence.

Good God, I wonder if I’m religious after all, thought Joseph, I wonder if I could ever take the Lord’s givings and withdrawals with such abject submission!

“I’m going to start a missionary school at Fort Wayne, Bailly,” continued McCoy, after a moment, “for Indians and whites both. Perhaps you’d like to send a few of your children to us later, after we’re started?”

“That sounds like a good idea, McCoy. I’ll keep in touch with you. My wife and I are going to do a little teaching of Indians ourselves down on the Little Calumet. But I think I’d like to send some of my younger children to you at Fort Wayne for a while. I don’t want my young people to lead too solitary a life down here in the wilderness. I want them to know the wilderness and the world both!”

“Well, my life’s the wilderness. I can’t say it isn’t hard and bitter and lonely at times, but it’s the Lord’s will. The text I’ve take for Mrs. McCoy’s life and mine is from Isaiah: ‘The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.’”

“I’d forgotten that old Isaiah said that! That’s fine!”

An hour or so later, Joseph and Marie were settling to sleep in their tent. The night sounds had almost ceased in the camp, the champing of horses, the yelp of a puppy or two, the grunting of pigs, the cry of a restless papoose. But the frogs were piping in the marshes below, and, far out on the dunes, a pack of wolves were howling to the moon. At that distance, the sound was like a faint, pleasant melody.

“I feel as if we were far from all our enemies, Joseph, our Rastels and De la Vignes – and Corinnes – all our troubles, and all intrigues, don’t you? It’s so beautiful and peaceful here, the dunes, the marsh, the moon – “

“I think you’d like the verse that McCoy quoted to me from Isaiah.”

“What was it, Joseph?”

“You’ll remember it: ‘The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.’ “

“The marshes of the Calumet, Joseph, and the dunes ‘shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.’”

“I hope so, Marie. Yet – listen to that baying. There are always wolves of some sort or other – wolves against the moo. “

“Not human wolves, Joseph. Not here.”

“I hope so, “ said Joseph, with a main’s unsentimental reservations.