Historians are agreed on the date~but still argue as to the site of the siege of the Fox Indians by their enemies, the Sauks and a band of French soldiers. Many sites have been suggested by students of French colonial history. None agree and it remains to this day a fascinating rid-dIe with part of the story centered around Starved Rock long before the siege started.

The Foxes were the "scourge of the forest" a rough and tough tribe, well able to take care of themselves in the endless and savage war.far, that was so common in Illinois before and after the coming of the white man.

They preyed on the French, stole their furs, enroute to be sold, and left the owners scalped and dead in the wilderness. The Illini were a favorite target of the Foxes to be slaughtered or roasted at the stake as captives.

But the Illini in all this savagery, did not wear the wings of angels or the mein of Saints. They were cruel and vengeful also. One source of early Illinois history say they captured a nephew of Oushala, head man of the Foxes, and made of him a burnt offering at the stake.

The war drums beat in fury in the Fox camps. Word of the outrage perpetrated by the Illini went out to the allies of the Foxes-the Macaou-tins, the Kickapoos, the Winnebagoes, the Sauks and even the distant Sioux and Abenakies.

The Fox warriors had nothing more to do than take to the warpath. The squaws could look after the crops as they did anyway. So the allied warriors in 1722 gathered at the base of old Starved Rock and drove some of the Peorias, part of the Illini confederation, to the top of the Rock, expecting them to starve to death.

But the Foxes found a tartar on their hands. The Peorias had no de-sire to have their scalps hung on a warpole in a Fox village. They battled back and the Foxes lost six men to each of the Peoria tribe's one.

Word of the latest war between the Foxes and the Illini set the French army commanders in the west to tearing their hair and a force of troops was started from Fort Chartres in southwestern Illinois to Starved Rock or Fort St. Louis as it was then known.

Before they arrived the Foxes had lifted the siege and sought the favor of the French for doing so. The Peorias freed of their potential death trap, scuttled for a safer place along the Mississippi and the Foxes took over their lands.

The Foxes continued their depradations against the French fur traders and courier de bois. Finally the government of Canada determined to wipe out the Foxes, men, women and children, to make the fur trade safe for the Canadian dealer.

How it was to be done was of no great concern to the royal govern-ment. It could conveniently look the other way, if the helpless members of a tribe, the women and the children met death by siege or in a fiendish way devised by the Foxes. The important thing was to wipe them out.

St. Ange, commander of the French troops at Fort Chartres, was ordered to start a force of soldiers and Sauk Indians north to intercept the Foxes.

The Foxes got wind of the dispatch of about 500 enemies against them and supposedly started east to seek asylum from their friends, the Iroquois.

Just where they were trapped by the Sauks and French is the matter of dispute by historians.

W. R. Foster of Ottawa, who from 1906 to 1946 was LaSalle county superintendent of schools, had no peer as a student of early day history and legends of northern Illinois suggested, logically, that the Foxes split into bands to keep from being annihilated and that more than one band may have been trapped.

The late Bishop Joseph H. Schlarman of Peoria, believed the Foxes were trapped in eastern Illinois, south of Chicago. Other historians, with less proof, even placed it on Covel Creek near Ottawa and Starved Rock.

The late Stanley Fayc, another competent student of colonial and Indian history in Illinois in the October 1935 issue of the Illinois State Historical Society quarterly, placed the siege on the Vermillion River, north of Lowell and about five miles south of Starved Rock.

W. C. Brigham, retired McLean county superintendent of schools, contended the Foxes were trapped near Arrowsmith, east of Bloomington.

In the 1900's John Steward of Plano, spent much time in Paris as agent for a harvester company, by whom he was employed. His interest in early Illinois history led him to search the old French colonial records of the late 17th and early 18th centuries in Illinois.

From these records he deduced the Foxes were trapped near the fa-mous old Indian village of Meramech, about two miles south of Plano. There Little Rock and Big Rock creeks, one on the east and the other on the west of a low bluff, joins at the south side of the bluff. Steward bought two acres or so of the top of the bluff and deeded it to the Plano schools. Then he marked the top with native boulders at the site of the "rifle pits" and "trenches" "used by the besiegers".

Where ever the Foxes were chased to the top of the bluff and held out against their enemies in the waning summer days of 1730, they were not annihilated, as the Sauks and French believed they would be.

The Sauks had been friends and allies of the Foxes for unknown years. Now they turned on the French and secretly aided the Foxes by passing them weapons, etc. The French soldiers did some grumbling about the matter, too, as their own supplies ran short and it appeared they would be there for an indefinite time. Even the hum drum of a garrison life was preferable to being stuck in the wilderness trying to wear out a band of stubborn Indians by siege.

The siege broken, the massacre done, and some of the luckier Foxes outdistancing their enemies, as they fled, enough Foxes survived to keep the race alive.

A century later they took part in the three months Black Hawk war of northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin marked by cruelty on the part of the Indians, defending lands against the encroachment of the whites, and by equally vicious tactics on the part of the white soldiers.

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