The Man with the Iron Hand

by John Carl Parish

Tonty and his companions continued their journey. When they reached the mouth of the Arkansas some of the men asked leave to plant a new French settlement on a tract of land which La Salle had granted to Tonty four years before. Tonty was willing; and so Jean Couture and several others pitched camp on the shore of the Arkansas River near its mouth and watched their comrades pass on without them. Then they built a log house with a palisade of stakes around it. It was a small settlement, but it was of strange importance in the story of the next three years.

On the 24th of June the disappointed search party was welcomed on the high rock of Fort St. Louis. But Tonty could not tarry at the fort. Taking with him two Illinois chiefs, he went on up the river and across the Great Lakes to where Denonville waited to talk with him.

Plans for a great gathering of the enemies of the Iroquois took form rapidly. The two Illinois chiefs, who came back from the visit to the Canadian governor late in 1686, were full of tales that roused their people. Runners, sent out from the fort, informed all the tribes that war was to be waged in the spring and asked them to join Tonty at Fort St. Louis.

When April of 1687 came, the fort on the rock saw the smoke rise from many fires, for Tonty was giving a dog-feast for his Indian warriors. Illinois, Shawnees, Mohegans, and Miamis gathered for the fray. La Forest had already set out with a band of Frenchmen; Durantaye and Du Luth were gathering together their warriors over on the Lake; and in the latter part of April, Bellefontaine, left with twenty men in charge of the fort, watched Tonty with sixteen Frenchmen and the band of Indian braves depart for the war in the far East.

CHAPTER XXV

NEWS FROM LA SALLE

Spring and summer passed quietly along the Illinois River. Tonty and his combined army had not yet returned from the Iroquois war; and those who had stayed at home to protect the fort and villages found no invaders to molest them. Boisrondet, the commissary of the fort, was busy with the fields of the French. The Indians, too, planted their crops and tended them. The braves visited the little garrison from time to time, hunted and fished some, gambled with cherry-stones more, and basked in the sun most of all.

September was half gone, and still there was nothing to break the monotony. The fourteenth of the month was Sunday, and perhaps in the fort the black-robed Father Allouez, sick and confined to his room, took some notice of the day. But to the Indians, one day was like another. It so happened that a group of them early in the afternoon were in the fields down the river from the fort. Suddenly one of their number, a Shawnee named Turpin, looking off to the stream sparkling in the sun, saw an Indian dugout approaching. In a moment he was at the water’s edge scanning with eager eyes the occupants of the bark. They came nearer, were even with him, passed by upstream; but he recognized no one of them. There was a strapping big Frenchman, two men in priestly robes, two other white men, and several strange Indians. Where had these men come from? No one knew of their going down the river.

When the strangers had passed, Turpin slipped across the fields and again came to the bank of the river higher up. This time the men in the dugout called to him. They were of the party of La Salle, they said. For a while the Indian studied them intently. Then catching the name La Salle, he was off on the dead run to the fort. Up the steep pathway he went as if on wings, and burst into the palisaded entrance with the cry that La Salle was coming.

Out of the inclosure with a bound jumped Boisrondet and the blacksmith, and down the side of the rock and around the base to the bank of the river they went faster than the Indian had come. Another Frenchman and a group of Indians were ahead of them, however, and were already leading the white men to the fort. Full of surprise and joy Boisrondet and his comrade embraced the strangers, who were five in number. The quick eye of Boisrondet ran over all of them, then looked back toward the river.