Chap. XXI.} |
When the founder of Kaskaskia was recalled to Mackinaw, he was relieved by two missionaries—by Pinet, who became the founder of Cahokia, preaching with such success, that his chapel could not contain the multitude that thronged to him; and Binnetau, who left his mission among the Abenakis to die on the upland plains of the Mississippi. Having followed the tribe to which he was attached, in their July ramble over their widest hunting-grounds,—now stifled amongst the tall grasses, now panting with thirst on the dry prairies,—all day tortured with heat, all night exposed on the ground to chilling dews,—he was seized with a mortal fever, and left his bones on the wilderness range of the buffaloes.
Before his death, and before Tonti left Illinois, Gabriel Marest, the Jesuit,—who, after chanting an ave to the cross among the icebergs of Hudson's Bay, had been taken by the English, and, on his liberation at the peace, had returned, by way of France, to America,—joined the mission at Kaskaskia, and, for a season, after the death of Binnetau and Pinet, had the sole charge of it. Very early in the eighteenth century, he was joined by Mermet. It was Mermet who assisted the commandant Jucherau, from Canada, in collecting a village of Indians and Canadians, and thus founding the first French post on the Ohio, or, as the
