“The French called them les Illinois du Rocher,” she said.

“And then they exterminated them, I suppose?” asked Jack. “You called them ‘a vanished tribe’ . . .”

“No, that’s not it. They were exterminated — by other Indians!”

“Ah!” he said.

The girl seemed to guess what he was thinking.

“Were you afraid of another one of my tirades against the whites?”

“Yes,” he confessed.

“Well, your heroes can rest easy . . . for the time being, anyway!”

They drove off the Interstate and onto route 178, which took them to Utica; Starved Rock State Park was very close by. They took the cat with them and, because the day was drawing to a close, they began at once to climb the rock, which was forty metres high. Some rudimentary steps had been cut into the south face so that visitors could reach the peak: on the three other sides, the rocky wall was absolutely vertical and it plunged into the Illinois River.

At this late hour, there was no one at the peak. Somewhat winded, they made their way along the edge of the cliff and looked out at the long barges gliding down the river, on their way to the Great Lakes or the Mississippi; they tried to imagine how the rock must have looked in the seventeenth century, when it was surmounted by Fort St. Louis; and then La Grande Sauterelle announced that she was going to tell him the story of Starved Rock.

It was a legend rather than a true story, and it explained both how the Illinois had been exterminated and why the rock was known as Starved Rock, or Rocher de la Famine.

The girl sat on the ground with her back against a big rock.

“In the olden days,” she began, “the Illinois lived around the rock. They had been there for a long time and it was their country — I mean, they hadn’t just arrived. They led a normal existence and they were happy and unhappy like everybody else. They lived in a region where nature was very rich: there were white pine, elm, maple and oak and a tremendous quantity of wild fruits and grasses of all sorts; they could hunt bison, deer, muskrat, beaver and rabbit, and there were squirrels and a great many birds; the river provided them with fish and fresh water; and on the other side of the river was a very fertile plain where they cultivated corn and squash.

“However, the rock made the other tribes envious because of its favourable location, and despite their peaceful nature, the Illinois were nearly always at war; they were obliged to protect their territory from the Iroquois, who came from the area around New York, and against the Renards, the Sauk, the Pottawotami, the Kikapoo and most of all, the Ottawa, who came from the north and the east.

“When the white explorers, missionaries and settlers began to arrive, the Illinois offered them hospitality and lived in harmony with them. However, the chief of the Ottawa, whose name was Pontiac, had resolved to unite all the tribes of the Midwest in order to rid the land of whites. The Illinois refused to be part of this alliance and, to reap vengeance, Chief Pontiac declared war on them. After a number of fierce, bloody battles, the Illinois, who were about to succumb, outnumbered by their enemies, were reduced to asking for peace. Unfortunately, during the negotiations, Chief Pontiac was murdered.