ain along the foot of the bluffs:
Grand Marais, Marais de Bois Coupe, Marais de l'Ourse, Marais Perdu;
with a rigole here and there, straight as a canal, to carry the water
into the Mississippi. You do not see Cahokia beautiful as it was when
Monsieur St. Ange de Bellerive was acting as governor of the Illinois
Territory, and waiting at Fort Chartres for the British to take
possession after the conquest. Some people had indeed gone off to
Ste. Grenevieve, and to Pain Court, that you now call Sah Loui', where
Pontiac was afterwards buried under sweetbrier, and is to-day trampled
under pavements. An Indian killed Pontiac between Cahokia and Prairie
du Pont. When he rose from his body and saw it was not a British
knife, but a red man's tomahawk, he was not a chief who would lie
still and bear it in silence. Yes, I have heard that he has been
seen walking through the grapevine tangle, all bleached as if the bad
redness was burned out of him. But the priest will tell you better, my
son. Do not believe such tales.

Besides, no two stories are alike. Pontiac was killed in his French
officer's uniform, which Monsieur de Montcalm gave him, and half the
people who saw him walking declared he wore that, while the rest swore
he was in buckskins and a blanket. You see how it is. A veritable
ghost would always appear the same, and not keep changing its clothes
like a vain girl. Paul Le Page had a fit one night from seeing the
dead chief with feathers in his hair, standing like stone in the white
French uniform. But do not credit such things.

It was half a dozen years before Pontiac's death that Celeste Barbeau
was kidnaped on her wedding day. She lived at Prairie du Pont; and
though Prairie du Pont is but a mile and a half south of Cahokia,
the road was not as safe then as it now is. My mother was one of the
bridesmaids; she has told it over to me a score of times. The wedding
was to be in the church; the same church that now stands on the east
side of the square. And on the south side of the square was the old
auberge. Claudis Beauvois said you could get as good wines at that
tavern as you could in New Orleans. But the court-house was not
built until 1795. The people did not need a court-house. They had no
quarrels among themselves which the priest could not settle, and
after the British conquest their only enemies were those Puants, the
Pottawattamie Indians, who took the English side, and paid no regard
when peace was declared,