"It was the establishment of military posts throughout this vast valley that eventually brought on a life struggle between the English and the French," says a historian.

At first the only spot of civilization in boundless wilderness was Tonty's little fort on the Illinois. Protected by it, the Indians went hunting and brought in buffalo skins and meat; their women planted and reaped maize; children were born; days came and went; autumn haze made the distances pearly; winter snow lay on the wigwams; men ran on snowshoes; and papooses shouted on the frozen river. Still no news came from La Salle.

Tonty had made a journey to the mouth of the Mississippi to meet him, after he landed with his colony, searching thirty leagues in each direction along the coast. La Salle was at that time groping through a maze of lagoons in Texas. Tonty, with his men, waded swamps to their necks, enduring more suffering than he had ever endured in his life before. This was in February of the year 1686. Finding it impossible to reach La Salle, who must be wandering somewhere on the Gulf of Mexico, Tonty wrote a letter to him, intrusting it to the hands of an Indian chief, with directions that it be delivered when the explorer appeared. He also left a couple of men who were willing to wait in the Arkansas villages to meet La Salle.

Two years passed before those men brought positive proof of the undespairing Norman's fate. The remnant of the party that started with La Salle from Fort St. Louis of Texas spent one winter at Fort St. Louis of the Illinois, bringing word that they had left their leader in good health on the coast. The AbbÉ Cavelier even collected furs in his brother's name, and went on to France, carrying his secret with him.

La Salle had been assassinated on the Trinity River, soon after setting out on his last determined search for the Mississippi. The eighteenth day of March, 1687, some of his brutal voyageurs hid themselves in bushes and shot him.

So slowly did events move then, and so powerless was man, an atom in the wilderness, that the great-hearted Italian, weeping aloud in rage and grief, realized that La Salle's bones had been bleaching a year and a half before the news of his death reached his lieutenant. It was not known that La Salle received burial. The wretches who assassinated him threw him into some brush. It was a satisfaction to Tonty that they all perished miserably afterwards; those who survived quarrels among themselves being killed by the Indians.

The undespairing Norman died instantly, without feeling or admitting defeat. And he was not defeated. Though his colony—including Father MembrÉ, who had been so long with him—perished by the hands of the Indians in Texas, in spite of Tonty's second journey to relieve them, his plan of settlements from the great lakes to the mouth of the Mississippi became a reality.

Down from Canada came two of the eleven Le Moyne brothers, D'Iberville and Bienville, fine fighting sons of a powerful colonial family, with royal permission to found near the great river's mouth that city which had been La Salle's dream. Fourteen years after La Salle's death, while D'Iberville was exploring for a site, the old chief, to whom Tonty had given a letter for La Salle, brought it carefully wrapped and delivered it into the hands of La Salle's more fortunate successor.

Tonty was associated with Le Moyne D'Iberville in these labors around the Gulf.

A long peninsula betwixt the Mississippi and Kaskaskia Rivers, known since as the American Bottom, lured away Indians from the great town on the Illinois. The new settlement founded on this peninsula was called Kaskaskia, for one of the tribes. As other posts sprung into existence, Fort St. Louis was less needed. "As early as 1712," we are told, "land titles were issued for a common field in Kaskaskia. Traders had already opened a commerce in skins and furs with the remote post of Isle Dauphine in Mobile Bay." Settlements were firmly established. By 1720 the luxuries of Europe came into the great tract taken by La Salle in the name of King Louis and called Louisiana.

Twelve years after La Salle's death a missionary named St. Cosme (Sant' Come) journeyed from Canada in a party guided by Tonty. St. Cosme has left this record of the man with the copper hand:—

"He guided us as far as the Arkansas and gave us much pleasure on the way, winning friendship of some savages and intimidating others who from jealousy or desire to plunder opposed the voyage; not only doing the duty of a brave man but that of a missionary. He quieted the voyageurs, by whom he was generally loved, and supported us by his example in devotion."

On the Chicago portage a little boy, given to the missionary perhaps because he was an orphan and the western country offered him the best chances in life, started eagerly ahead, though he was told to wait. The rest of the party, having goods and canoes to carry from the Chicago River to the Desplaines, lost sight of him, and he was never seen again. Autumn grass grew tall over the marshy portage, but they dared not set it afire, though his fate was doubtless hidden in that grass. The party divided and searched for him, calling and firing guns. Three days they searched, and daring to wait no longer, for it was November and the river ready to glaze with ice, they left him to some French people at the post of Chicago. But the child was not found. He disappeared and no one ever knew what became of him.

Like this is Henri de Tonty's disappearance from history. The records show him working with Le Moyne D'Iberville and Le Moyne de Bienville to found New Orleans and Mobile, pushing the enterprises which La Salle had begun. He has been blamed with the misbehavior of a relative of his, Alphonse de Tonty, who got into disgrace at the post of Detroit. Little justice has been done to the memory of this man, who should not be forgotten in the west. So quietly did he slip out of life that his burial place is unknown. Some people believe that he came back to the Rock long after its buildings were dismantled and it had ceased to be Fort St. Louis of the Illinois. Others say he died in Mobile. But it is probable that both La Salle and Tonty left their bodies to the wilderness which their invincible spirits had conquered.

After the settlement of Kaskaskia a strong fortress was built sixteen miles above, on the same side of the Mississippi. The king of France spent a million crowns strengthening this place, which was called Fort Chartres. Its massive walls, inclosing four acres, and its buildings and arched gateway were like some medieval stronghold strangely transplanted from the Old World. White uniformed troops paraded. A village sprang up around it. Fort Chartres was the center of government until Kaskaskia became the first capital of the Illinois territory. Applications for land had to be made at this post. Indians on the Mississippi, for it was a little distance from the shore, heard drumbeat and sunset gun, and were proud of going in and out of its mighty gateway under the white flag of France.

Other villages began on the eastern bank of the river—Cahokia, opposite the present city of St. Louis, and Prairie du Rocher, nearer Kaskaskia. Ste. Genevieve also was built in what is now the state of Missouri, on land which then was claimed by the Spaniards. There was a Post of Natchitoches on the Red River, as well as a Post of Washita on the Washita River. Settlements were also founded upon La Fourche and Fausse RiviÈre above New Orleans.

"The finest country we have seen," wrote one of the adventurers in those days, "is all from Chicago to the Tamaroas. It is nothing but prairie and clumps of wood as far as you can see. The Tamaroas are eight leagues from the Illinois." Chicago was a landing place and portage from the great lakes long before a stockade with a blockhouse was built called Fort Dearborn.

"Monjolly," wrote the same adventurer, "or Mount Jolliet, is a mound of earth on the prairie on the right side of the Illinois River as you go down, elevated about thirty feet. The Indians say at the time of the great deluge one of their ancestors escaped, and this little mountain is his canoe which he turned over there."

La Salle had learned from the Iroquois about the Ohio River. But the region through which it flowed to the Mississippi remained for a long while an unbroken wilderness. The English settlements on their strip of Atlantic coast, however, and the French settlements in the west, reached gradually out over this territory and met and grappled. Whichever power got and kept the mastery of the west would get the mastery of the continent.

The territory of Kentucky, like that of Michigan, was owned by no tribe of Indians. "It was the common hunting and fighting ground of Ohio tribes on the north and Cherokees and Chickasaws on the south."

There was indeed one exception to the uninhabited state of all that land stretching betwixt the Alleghanies and the Mississippi. Vincennes, now a town of Indiana, was, after Kaskaskia, the oldest place in the west. This isolated post is said to have been founded by French soldiers and emigrants. Five thousand acres were devoted to the common field. De Vincennes, for whom it was named, was a nephew of Louis Jolliet. And while it is not at all certain that he founded the post, he doubtless sojourned there in the Indiana country during his roving life. A small stockade on the site of the town of Fort Wayne is said to have been built by him.

French settlements began to extend southward from Lake Erie to the head waters of the Ohio, like a chain to check the English. Presqu' Isle, now Erie, Pennsylvania, was founded about the same time as Vincennes.

A French settler built his house in an inclosure of two or three acres. The unvarying model was one story high, with porches or galleries surrounding it. Wooden walls were filled and daubed with a solid mass of what was called cat-and-clay, a mixture of mortar and chopped straw or Spanish moss. The chimney was of the same materials, shaped by four long corner posts, wide apart below, and nearer together at the top.

As fast as children grew up and married they built their cottages in their father's yard; and so it went on, until with children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, a small village accumulated around one old couple.

The French were not anxious to obtain grants of the rich wild land. Every settlement had its common field, large or small, as was desired. A portion of this field was given to each person in the village for his own, and he was obliged to cultivate it and raise food for his family. If a man neglected his ground, it was taken from him. A large tract of land called the common pasture was also inclosed for everybody's cattle to graze in.

Sometimes houses were set facing one court, or center, like a camp, for defense. But generally the French had little trouble with their savage neighbors, who took very kindly to them. The story of western settlement is not that dreadful story of continual wars with Indians which reddens the pages of eastern colonies. The French were gay people. They loved to dance and hunt and spend their time in amusements. While the serious, stubborn English were grubbing out the foundations of great states on the Atlantic coast, it must be confessed these happy folks cared little about developing the rich Mississippi valley.

During all its early occupation this hospitable land abounded with game. Though in November the buffaloes became so lean that only their tongues were eaten, swans, geese, and ducks were always plentiful, and the fish could not be exhausted.

On a day in February, people from Kaskaskia hurried over the road which then stretched a league to the Mississippi, for the town was on the Kaskaskia River bank. There were settlers in blanket capotes, shaped like friars' frocks, with hoods to draw over their heads. If it had been June instead of February, a blue or red kerchief would have covered the men's heads. The dress of an ordinary frontiersman in those days consisted of shirt, breech-cloth, and buckskin leggins, with moccasins, and neips, or strips of blanket wrapped around the feet for stockings. The voyageur so equipped could undertake any hardship. But in the settlements wooden shoes were worn instead of moccasins, and garments of texture lighter than buckskin. The women wore short gowns, or long, full jackets, and petticoats; and their moccasins were like those of squaws, ornamented with beautiful quill-work. Their outer wraps were not unlike the men's; so a multitude of blanket capotes flocked toward the Mississippi bank, which at that time had not been washed away, and rose steeply above the water. They had all run to see a procession of boats pass by from Fort Chartres.

A little negro had brought the news that the boats were in sight. Black slaves were owned by some of the French; and Indian slaves, sold by their captors to the settlers, had long been members of these patriarchal households. Many of them had left their work to follow their masters to the river; the negroes pointing and shouting, the Indians standing motionless and silent.

The sun flecked a broad expanse of water, and down this shining track rushed a fleet of canoes; white uniforms leading, and brick-colored heads above dusky-fringed buckskins following close after. This little army waved their hands and fired guns to salute the crowd on shore. The crowd all jangled voices in excited talk, no man listening to what another said.

"See you—there are Monsieur Pierre D'Artaguette and the Chevalier De Vincennes and excellent Father Senat in the first boat."

"The young St. Ange and Sieur Lalande follow them."

"How many of our good Indians have thrown themselves into this expedition! The Chickasaw nation may howl when they see this array! They will be taught to leave the boats from New Orleans alone!"

"But suppose Sieur De Bienville and his army do not meet the Commandant D'Artaguette when he reaches the Chickasaw country?"

"During his two years at Fort Chartres has Sieur D'Artaguette made mistakes? The expedition will succeed."

"The saints keep that beautiful boy!—for to look at him, though he is so hardy, Monsieur Pierre D'Artaguette is as handsome as a woman. I have heard the southern tribes sacrifice their own children to the sun. This is a fair company of Christians to venture against such devils."

The Chickasaws, occupying a tract of country now stretching across northern Mississippi and western Tennessee, were friendly to the English and willing to encroach on the French. They interrupted river traffic and practiced every cruelty on their prisoners. D'Artaguette knew as well as the early explorers that in dealing with savages it is a fatal policy to overlook or excuse their ill-behavior. They themselves believed in exact revenge, and despised a foe who did not strike back, their insolence becoming boundless if not curbed. So he had planned with Le Moyne de Bienville a concerted attack on these allies of the English. Bienville, bringing troops up river from New Orleans, was to meet him in the Chickasaw country on a day and spot carefully specified.

The brilliant pageant of canoes went on down the river, seeming to grow smaller, until it dwindled to nothingness in the distance.

But in the course of weeks only a few men came back, sent by the Chickasaws, to tell about the fate of their leaders. The troops from New Orleans did not keep the appointment, arriving too late and then retreating. D'Artaguette, urged by his Indians, made the attack with such force as he had, and his brave array was destroyed. He and the Chevalier Vincennes, with Laland, Father Senat, and many others, a circle of noble human torches, perished at the stake. People lamented aloud in Kaskaskia and Cahokia streets, and the white flag of France slipped down to half-mast on Fort Chartres.

This victory made the Chickasaw Indians so bold that scarcely a French convoy on the river escaped them. There is a story that a young girl reached the gate of Fort Chartres, starving and in rags, from wandering through swamps and woods. She was the last of a family arrived from France, and sought her sister, an officer's wife, in the fort. The Chickasaws had killed every other relative; she, escaping alone, was ready to die of exposure when she saw the flag through the trees.

But another captain of Fort Chartres, no bolder than young Pierre D'Artaguette, but more fortunate, named Neyon de Villiers, twenty years afterwards led troops as far east as the present state of Pennsylvania, and helped his brother, Coulon de Villiers, continue the struggle betwixt French and English by defeating, at Fort Necessity, the English commanded by a young Virginia officer named George Washington.