They left Fort Crevecoeur on the last day of February, twenty-four hours before La Salle started northward, and entered the Mississippi on the 12th of March. The great food-stocked stream afforded them plenty of game, wild turkeys, buffaloes, deer, and fish. The adventurers excused themselves from observing the Lenten season set apart by the Church for fasting; but Father Hennepin said prayers several times a day. He was a great robust Fleming, with almost as much endurance as that hardy Norman, La Salle. They had paddled about a month up river through the region where Marquette and Jolliet had descended, when one afternoon they stopped to repair their canoe and cook a wild turkey. Hennepin, with his sleeves rolled back, was daubing the canoe with pitch, and the others were busy at the fire, when a war whoop, followed by continuous yelling, echoed from forest to forest, and a hundred and twenty naked Sioux or Dacotah Indians sprang out of boats to seize them. It was no use for Father Hennepin to show a peace-pipe or offer fine tobacco. The Frenchmen were prisoners. And when these savages learned by questioning with signs, and by drawing on the sand with a stick, that the Miamis, whom they were pursuing to fight, were far eastward out of their reach, three or four old warriors laid their hands on Hennepin's shaven crown and began to cry and howl like little boys. [Illustration: Totem of the Sioux.] The friar in his long gray capote or hooded garment, which fell to his feet, girt about the waist by a rope called the cord of St. Francis, stood, with bare toes showing on his sandals, inclining his fat head with sympathy. He took out his handkerchief and wiped the old men's faces. Du Gay and Ako, in spite of the peril, laughed to see him daub the war paint. "The good father hath no suspicion that these old wretches are dooming him to death," said Ako to Du Gay.