A Little Girl in Old Detroit | Page 6

Marsac with a dignified bow.
"Mam'selle, I hope you are not tired out. You look--"
A saucy smile went over her face. "Do I look very strange?" pertly.
"And I am not tired, but half starved. Good night, Monsieur."
"Pani will soon remedy that."
The bell was clanging out its six strokes. That was the old signal for the
Indians and whoever lived outside the palisades to retire.

He bowed again and walked up to the Fort and the Parade.
"Angelot," he said to himself, knitting his brow. "Where have I heard
the name away from Detroit? She will be a pretty girl and I must keep
an eye on her."
CHAPTER II.
RAISING THE NEW FLAG.
Old Detroit had seemed roomy enough when Monsieur Cadillac
planted the lilies of France and flung out the royal standard. And the
hardy men slept cheerfully on their beds of fir twigs with blankets
drawn over them, and the sky for a canopy, until the stockade was built
and the rude fort made a place of shelter. But before the women came it
had been rendered habitable and more secure; streets were laid out, the
chapel of St. Anne's built, and many houses put up inside the palisades.
And there was gay, cheerful life, too, for French spirits and vivacity
could not droop long in such exhilarating air.
Canoes and row boats went up and down the river with merry crews.
And in May there was a pole put in what was to be the military garden,
and from it floated the white flag of France. On the green there was a
great concourse and much merriment and dancing, and not a little love
making. For if a soldier asked a pretty Indian maid in marriage, the
Commandant winked at it, and she soon acquired French and danced
with the gayest of them.
Then there was a gala time when the furs came in and the sales were
made, and the boats loaded and sent on to Montreal to be shipped
across the sea; or the Dutch merchants came from the Mohawk valley
or New Amsterdam to trade. The rollicking coureurs des bois, who
came to be almost a race by themselves, added their jollity and often
carried it too far, ending in fighting and arrests.
But it was not all gayety. Up to this time there had been two terrible
attacks on the fort, and many minor ones. Attempts had been made to
burn it; sometimes the garrison almost starved in bad seasons. France,

in all her seventy years of possession, never struck the secret of
colonizing. The thrifty emigrant in want of a home where he could
breathe a freer air than on his native soil was at once refused. The Jesuit
rule was strict as to religion; the King of France would allow no laws
but his own, and looked upon his colonies as sources of revenue if any
could be squeezed out of them, sources of glory if not.
The downfall of Canada had been a sad blow. The French colonist felt
it more keenly than the people thousands of miles away, occupied with
many other things. And the bitterest of all protests was made by the
Jesuits and the Church. They had been fervent and heroic laborers, and
many a life had been bravely sacrificed for the furtherance of the work
among the Indians.
True, there had not been a cordial sympathy between the Jesuits and the
Recollets, but the latter had proved the greater favorites in Detroit.
There was now the Recollet house near the church, where they were
training young girls and teaching the catechism and the rules of the
Church, as often orally as by book, as few could read. Here were some
Indian girls from tribes that had been almost decimated in the savage
wars, some of whom were bound out afterward as servants. There were
slaves, mostly of the old Pawnee tribe, some very old, indeed; others
had married, but their children were under the ban of their parents.
With the coming of the English there was a wider liberty, a new
atmosphere, and though the French protested bitterly and could not but
believe the mother country would make some strenuous effort to
recover the territory as they temporized with the Indians and held out
vague hopes, yet, as the years passed on, they found themselves
insensibly yielding to the sway, and compelled now and then to fight
for their homes against a treacherous enemy. Mayor Gladwyn had been
a hero to them in his bravery and perseverance.
There came in a wealthier class of citizens to settle, and officials were
not wanting in showy attire. Black silk breeches and hose, enormous
shoe buckles, stiff stocks, velvet and satin coats and beaver hats were
often