LOST IN CHICAGO. Once a little boy was lost in Chicago.
That's nothing new, you think. A little boy is often lost in Chicago, and in every other big city in the world. His mother just tells the police about it, and sometimes he is found right away. If he isn't, the newspapers help find him by printing his picture. He is always scared and sorry, and promises that he will never, never wander away from home and get lost again.
This isn't that kind of a story. It happened more than two hundred years ago, when no one but Indians lived where Chicago stands today. The ground that is now covered by the city was a flat marshy prairie, 10 miles wide, and stretching for 25 miles along the low sandy shore of Lake Michigan. Around the north ern and western edge of this plain circled a ridge of wooded hills. In the southwest near the ridge was a low place filled with muddy water, called Mud Lake.
On the Great Chicago Plain The Chicago plain was only a foot or two higher than Lake Michigan, so it was flooded every spring by rain and melted snow. In summer it was a wild meadow, green and blossomy. Herds of deer and buffalo came to feed on the grasses. Tribes of Indians came to plant corn, fish, and shoot ducks.
The Indians always stayed for the fall hunting.
The brown grass was then so tall, all over the prairie, that they could slip through it and get very close to game without being seen. But with the first snowfall the animals and Indians both moved to the shelter of the woods. In winter bitter winds blew across the Chicago plain, and the snow was heaped in deep drifts. The stormy lake rolled up in great billows over the frozen sand-bars.
Now, what kind of a place do you think that was for a little white boy to get lost in? Especially in October, when the grass was higher than any little ten-year-old boy's head? He was a French boy named Louis Jean de Muys.
The very first white mer in this part of America were French. Louis Jean's father was an officer in a French fort on Starved Rock. That was a high rocky bluff on the Illinois River, a hundred miles west of the Chicago plain. Perhaps his mother had died.
Anyhow, for some very good reason, Louis Jean had to come all the way from Montreal, Canada, to j oin his father.
He came with Henry de Tonty, commander of the fort on Starved Rock, and one of the truest heroes ever in the wilderness of Illinois. He had been there for nearly 20 years, so he knew the country as well as any Indian. In a letter, Louis Jean's father had told him that it would not be safe for such a little boy to make that long, wild journey, except in charge of this brave soldier of France. He must give the strictest obedience to Monsieur de Tonty. " Mon sieur" is the French name for Mister. Monsieur de Tonty loved Louis Jean and called him "my son." It was a fine big party that left Montreal. There were four missionary priests going out to preach to the Indians, and several French-Canadian fur trap pers. The fleet of big canoes, loaded with supplies for the distant fort, was paddled by Indians who loved the French. For more than a thousand miles Monsieur de Tonty led the party over the waters of four vast lakes as big as seas. At last the canoes turned out of Lake Michigan into the Chicago River.
Down the south fork of this Y-shaped stream they paddled to Mud Lake. They were glad to find there a big village of friendly Miami Indians. The canoes and goods had to be carried from there nine miles, over the wooded hills, to the bank of the Des Plaines River, which flowed westward into the Illinois River.
Even with the help of the village Indians there were two weeks of the hardest kind of work, for there were no ponies. Everything had to be carried on the men's backs.
As Louis Jean was too small to help, he had a fine time with the Indian boys. He learned to play the ball game of lacrosse. He paddled a canoe around Mud Lake and fished with a bone hook.
One morning the carrying was all done and half the men were with the reloaded canoes on the Des Plaines. The rest made ready to join them. Louis Jean had nothing to do, so he was ready among the first. Monsieur de Tonty had to make a speech and give presents to the Miamis, who had fed and lodged the whole party and helped in the carrying. The little boy was impatient.