Old Kaskaskia

Old Kaskaskia

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Old Kaskaskia, by Mary Hartwell
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Title: Old Kaskaskia
Author: Mary Hartwell Catherwood
Release Date: May 19, 2006 [EBook #18423]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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KASKASKIA ***

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OLD KASKASKIA
BY

MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD
AUTHOR OF "THE LADY OF FORT ST. JOHN," "THE ROMANCE
OF DOLLARD," ETC.

[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND
COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1893
Copyright, 1893,
By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., and MARY HARTWELL
CATHERWOOD.
All rights reserved.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. Electrotyped and
Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.

CONTENTS.
PART FIRST: PAGE
The Bonfire of St. John 1
PART SECOND:
A Field Day 55
PART THIRD:
The Rising 106
PART FOURTH:

The Flood 160

OLD KASKASKIA.

PART FIRST.
THE BONFIRE OF ST. JOHN.
Early in the century, on a summer evening, Jean Lozier stood on the
bluff looking at Kaskaskia. He loved it with the homesick longing of
one who is born for towns and condemned to the fields. Moses looking
into the promised land had such visions and ideals as this old lad
cherished. Jean was old in feeling, though not yet out of his teens. The
training-masters of life had got him early, and found under his red
sunburn and knobby joints, his black eyes and bushy eyebrows, the
nature that passionately aspires. The town of Kaskaskia was his
sweetheart. It tantalized him with advantage and growth while he had
to turn the clods of the upland. The long peninsula on which Kaskaskia
stood, between the Okaw and the Mississippi rivers, lay below him in
the glory of sunset. Southward to the point spread lands owned by the
parish, and known as the common pasture. Jean could see the church of
the Immaculate Conception and the tower built for its ancient bell, the
convent northward, and all the pleasant streets bowered in trees. The
wharf was crowded with vessels from New Orleans and Cahokia, and
the arched stone bridge across the Okaw was a thoroughfare of
hurrying carriages.
The road at the foot of the bluff, more than a hundred feet below Jean,
showed its white flint belt in distant laps and stretches through northern
foliage. It led to the territorial governor's country-seat of Elvirade;
thence to Fort Chartres and Prairie du Rocher; so on to Cahokia, where
it met the great trails of the far north. The road also swarmed with
carriages and riders on horses, all moving toward Colonel Pierre
Menard's house. Jean could not see his seignior's chimneys for the trees
and the dismantled and deserted earthworks of Fort Gage. The fort had

once protected Kaskaskia, but in these early peaceful times of the
Illinois Territory it no longer maintained a garrison.
The lad guessed what was going on; those happy Kaskaskians, the fine
world, were having a ball at Colonel Menard's. Summer and winter
they danced, they made fêtes, they enjoyed life. When the territorial
Assembly met in this capital of the West, he had often frosted himself
late into the winter night, watching the lights and listening to the music
in Kaskaskia. Jean Lozier knew every bit of its history. The parish
priest, Father Olivier, who came to hear him confess because he could
not leave his grandfather, had told it to him. There was a record book
transmitted from priest to priest from the earliest settlement of
Cascasquia of the Illinois. Jean loved the story of young D'Artaguette,
whom the boatmen yet celebrated in song. On moonlight nights, when
the Mississippi showed its broad sheet four miles away across the level
plain, he sometimes fooled himself with thinking he could see the fleet
of young soldiers passing down the river, bearing the French flag;
phantoms proceeding again to their tragedy and the Indian stake.
He admired the seat where his seignior lived in comfort and great
hospitality, but all the crowds pressing to Pierre Menard's house
seemed to him to have less wisdom than the single man who met and
passed them and crossed the bridge into Kaskaskia. The vesper bell
rung, breaking its music in echoes against the sandstone bosom of the
bluff. Red splendors faded from the sky, leaving a pearl-gray bank
heaped over the farther river. Still Jean watched Kaskaskia.
"But