CAHOKIA: ITS OLD CEMETERY

AN OLD WELL, AND AN AMIABLE LADY VISITS THEM

LET us now, whilst hastening toward the conclusion of our brief story, turn to the contemplation of several scenes of peace and contentment. The firstk shall be a visit to Madame Le Compte's gardens, in the long, long ago. . Similar gardens can still be found in Cahokia, in old French settlements this very day.

It was early morning, when the first glints of the soon rising sun tinted all the earth with their faint colorings; a morning of a glorious day in June 1776, when the fires of a war of independence were being kindled in all the Eastern colonies, when in Boston troops were being drilled, and the sound of martial music filled the air, that Madame Le Compte emerged from the rear door of her modest home--built in true French fashion, in order to work in her flower and vegetable garden; for strange to say, these French gardens were usually platted to the rear.

She was attired in homely fashion, home-spun garments, and a sun-bonnet on her comely head. In her hand she carried a small bucket, in which was set a whisp of alder which was to be used for sprinkling purposes, Two catalpa trees stood at the garden entrance and shadowed its center path. Along this path were rows of stock and spice pinks and larkspur, and beds of butter-cups and flowering portulaca, and verbenias and marigold and geraniums, grown from seed brought by the immigrants from Canada and faraway France. At the log-fence that enclosed the flower garden there grew Tiger-lilies and tall Holly-hocks, now in full bloom. Up the southern side of the garden, on a rude lattice there clambered a wild moss-rose, and it sent its tendrils and branches far away to reach the well-porch that closed the end of the path.

To this well Madame Le Compte slowly wended her way, conversing softly with the flowers as she passed them by. And they rejoicing at her tendance seemed to answer in joyous mood, and the blue-bells that were hidden near the well, seemed to tinkle at her approach. "How glorious is this day, Feast day of the Corpus Christi, when all the world is strewn with blessings." "How beautiful, too, the morning sun that just now is ascending; hark, the call of the thrush is in the wooded copse, and the hoot-owl still is sounding its sombre tune. Hark, too, there comes upon my ear the song of the robin and the finch from yonder grove, and now I hear the crow of the canticleer of morn, calling the dawn of the rising charioteer of the sun."

And all the flowers nodded their heads in confirmation of these soft-spoken words; or were they but dream-visions projected into the future. We know it not, but this we know, that just such gardens grew in old Cahokia, and just such ladies of refinement walked adown their curving paths.

In memory we see the roses gleaming in the early rays of the sun, and their faint, exquisite fragrance is borne upon the whispering breeze. Into the morning's silence steals the peal of the Angelus bell, and carries into our hearts, as it did into that of Madame Le Compte, a message of benediction, a sweet song of promise.

A modern poet, Jane L. Hinckley, of Belleville, Illinois, has memorialized one of the flowers grown in early French gardens. It reads:

See, now the well is reached, and the bucket is lowered to draw its cooling waters. And it descended fast, its long rope uncoiling from its whirling axle, soon to fall with a splash into the waters deep. No tiny, shallow well this; no driven well, but wide in circumference, its walls of roughhewn stone, from the chinks of which hung great whisps of greening moss and filigree of ferns; far down into earth's cavity. Wide the diameter of this well, and if one stood, as now did Madame Le Compte, and peered into its darkling void, one saw, deep down, the sparkling water, and in its clear, now stilled surface, the reflection of one's own face. Deep, deep down into old mother earth this tunnel seemed to delve, deep as though to reach truly to earth's very center, yet, but a fraction infinitesimal.

Now Madame Le Compte turned to the winding wheel, and slowly but surely the heavy-laden bucket ascended, and when it reached the brink of the well enclosure, its contents were ladelled into the lesser vessel, and a gourd brought refreshing drink to Madame's lips.

This done she hastened to sprinkle her flowers ere the sun should parch them by her fiery, June-lit rays.

But, yet, she lingered, and a cord that hung beside the bucket rope, was pulled and soon a wicker, basket appeared and in it there reposed, covered with a great cabbage or rhubarb leaf, a pat of golden butter and a crock of sweet, pure cream--or was this crock perchance filled with sparkling wine? We cannot say, history does not reveal all secrets even to the studious mind.

THE OLD-OLD CEMETERY

And now let us visit the old-old cemetery that opened its gates wide, when the first man, or woman, or child was to be carried past into its hallowed sphere. It was customary for the early settlers to inter their dead close to their homes, when they were widely scattered, and the writer well remembers such private burial grounds, close to one of the old homes in little Fayetteville, in this Illinois country. But not so in old Cahokia. Here the settlers were all of the Catholic faith, and their dead dwelt close to the church, yea, surrounded it, as though they lingered near that they might surely hear the first call of trumpet when all should again be called to life eternal. This cemetery was on this very Corpus Christi day, 1796 to be the scene of a procession, wending its way from the doors of the then ruins of a tiny chapel ... three years later there should stand instead a great frame church, historic structure now in 1943, then not yet built.

For upward of one hundred and thirty-nine years there were buried in this old cemetery the white, the red and the black; all one in faith, all slumbering peacefully under the greening sod, under the flower-strewn grass. Two of the early missionary Fathers found their last resting-place in this quiet and secluded spot. One was Father John A. Jacque, a native of Lorraine, France; the other Father Matthew Condamine. (From 1700 to 1839 this burial ground was used.)

And Madame Le Compte, when the procession had wound its way in and out among the paths of the old cemetery, recited softly the words of an old hymn; the Benedictus Dominus Deus Israel, translated into French. We know not where Madame learned these words, but, doubtless, in some convent school of Canada or France. We, this day, May 1, 1943, musing on the past delve not so deep. We quote but this: