Fortified and garrisoned with troops, it could command the Illinois and control the water route from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi against enemies. It could be made a bastion of defense for the Illinois Indians and their friends and a good base for the fur trade for hundreds of miles around.

May 6 LaSalle was back on his home ground at Fort Frontenac, after a journey of 1,000 miles through frozen wilderness, down river and back, a trip that would have exhausted the strength or spirit of a man less determined to carry out his plans than this gentleman of France.

More disastrous news waited LaSalle at Frontenac. Messengers told him more of Tonti's men had taken to the tall timber, had wrecked the Fort and stolen his goods. Others told him the same scoundrels had pillaged Fort Miami, ritled Fort Conti at Niagara, seized his furs at Mackinac and that some of them were on their way to Frontenac with murder in their hearts.

LaSalle learned also that a ship from France with cargo of goods for his colony and 20 men for the same purpose had been wrecked in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Enemies had stirred up his creditors against him. It was a disheartening prospect that he faced now. But still he would not throw up the sponge~he straightened matters out. His mutinous crew were captured and sent to Frontenac for sentence by the Governor-a pair were shot resisting arrest.

In the heat of early August, LaSalle and a party of 24 men and his lieutenant, Francois de la Forest, set out once again for Fort Crevecour or, more properly LeRocher, where he expected to find Tonti, with the Fort built on top of the great Rock.

It was late in November, 1680 when they reached LeRocher and the great village of the Illini. But there were no battlements on top of the Rock, no sign that one had been started, no word of the presence of Tonti. LaSalle was alarmed at the absence of Tonti, his faithful lieuten-ant, in so many long journeys and hardships of the Illinois wilderness. It was soon evident, looking at the ruins of the Illinois village and the cold camps of the Iroquois, what had happened since he last set foot in the camp.

Buzzards wheeled lazily in the autumn sky, the ominous sign of the disaster for wherever these ugly birds were seen there has been death in one form or another. The dogs slinked through the ruins of the burned and destroyed huts, there was everywhere the odor of death and the awful evi(1cnce of the fury of the Iroqouis attack on the village of the Illinois.

Corpses lay everywhere, some of children, their brains beaten our with clubs, men had been clubbed or speared to death. Women were sprawled in death trying to protect their papooses. Old men and withered crones, unable to protect themselves had fallen an easy victim to the Iroquois. The once busy village streets, that had hummed with life, now were avenues of violent death. Graves had been ripped open and bodies des-(ccatc(l. In short the Iroquois had shown themselves, once more to be i?flong the most savage arid cruelest of all American tribes.

LaSalle left some of his men at LeRocher, while he descended the Illinois in a fruitless search for his apparently lost friend, Tonti, and the Franciscan priests Membre and De la Ribourde who had been with LaSalle. The search was fruitless,' sadly LaSalle retraced his trail up the Illinois once more, past the ruined Illinois village, near LeRocher, where he picked up the men he had left there, and set out in rigorous winter weather to Fort Miami. There they found LaForest with planks and timber for a new vessel to sail the Great Lakes and replace the lost Griffon.

Where was Tonti all this time? He had gone up river to examine LeRoclier. More of his men had skipped out on him, as said, leaving him with three loyal ones and the two priests. Tonti with this faithful hand-ful had lived with the Indians at LeRocher until September 1680. It was about September 10th, that a Shawnee arrived with the terrible news, that a party of Iroqouis was hidden in the thick timber along the Big Vermillion or Aramoni river, west of LeRocher and the Indian camp. Now Tonti was in deadly danger of his life-the Illinois accused him of being a spy, for the dreaded Iroquois. He advanced to meet the Iroquois, when the battle was joined between that tribe and the Illinois on the plain, west of LeRocher, and the Indian camp below Utica on the Illinois.

One warrior plunged a knife into the breast of Tonti, another thought. fully looked over his scalp for a souvenir. Some debated what to do with as a friend of the French and Illinois. It was the question of tying~ to a stake or turning him loose, to still another action of the paint!1' and ferocious Irquois. Finally the wounded Tonti, weak from loss of blood was directed to go to the camp of the Illinois and tell them the Iroqouis were "friends of the Governor of France" and wanted only peace. Tonti warned the Illinois the Iroquois were not to be trusted.

The more timid of the Illinois burned their lodges, took their women and children off the island, where they had been placed for safety and skipped for safety down the river.

Two days later the Iroqouis proposed peace and gave Tonti skins to induce him to leave. Tonti kicked them away with supreme contempt for the offer. But he could do no more for the already doomed Illinois Indians. He accepted an offer of safe conduct from the Iroquois, for him-self and the two friars, Membre and LeRibourde, and set off up the Illi-nois in a leaky canoe partly laden with furs. That was September 18, 1680. The next day the canoe leaked so badly it was beached at what is now Seneca, 25 miles east of LeRocher. Here Father de Ia Ribourde went into the forest to pray, against the advice of those with him. He was never seen alive again by the white men.

The story is told that the Kickapoos fell on him with wooden head-knockers and left the 65 year old priest dead in the woods, where his body was never found.

As was LaSalle, he was a gentleman of France, son and heir of a nobleman of Burgundy. His piety and devotion to his church were known throughout Canada for which he gave up his old home, friends and finally his life.

The first death among the missionaries, who had toiled in the Illinois, his fate was meted out to Father Membre in Texas, in 1689, to Father James Gravier from wounds at the hands of the Indians on the Mississippi Gulf coast in 1708 and to Father Sebastian Ralse a 1,000 miles from the Illinois valley at the hands of the Indians and English settlers in Maine, in 1724.

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