The Man with the Iron Hand

A black-robed priest, a young fur trader, five Frenchmen, and a young Indian boy sat in two birch-bark canoes on the broad current of the Mississippi River one summer evening. H...

It was many days later, and the quiet and beauty of June had come upon the Mississippi Valley. From in front of the Peoria lodges on the banks of the Iowa River, a slender trail...

For several days the canoes of La Salle’s party passed wet banks and thick canebrakes. No longer were to be seen the otter and the flattailed beaver, for they had been driven ou...

Throughout the fight Tonty’s life hung upon a thread. An impetuous Onondaga had stabbed him in the side, but fortunately the knife had glanced from a rib. Another Indian seized...

On the south bank of the river Illinois, a mile or more above the plain where lay the deserted village of the Kaskaskias, a great rock rose sheer from the water to a height of o...

“The Iroquois are coming!” It was a cry that shook the heart of even the boldest among the Illinois Indians. Fierce as the northwest wind in winter, the cruel, bloodthirsty red...

Spring was coming, and the giant of the Great Valley, lying stretched at full length, was beginning to stir uneasily. Too long had he slept with his head in the snow far up in t...

Night came on cold and still. In the river the floating particles of ice grew into a solid sheet until the stream was covered from shore to shore. La Salle, having retired with...

Somewhere off to the east the Mississippi River was running down through the Great Valley to the sea; and La Salle’s determination to find it deepened with his discouragements....

The camp-fires of five hundred Iroquois glowed in the frosty night air, the smoke hovering above like a drifting cloud under the moon. Some of the five hundred lay sleeping, the...

The level stretch of land along the north bank of the Illinois River, where lay the lodges of the Kaskaskias, swarmed with hundreds of Indian braves who were eager to be off int...

It was perhaps as well that Tonty was compelled to turn back, for he could have done little good even if he had been able to press on and reach the Bay of St. Louis. When he was...

For ten days the air was snapping with cold, and the river beside the Peoria village remained frozen. In the hearts of the Peorias lingered the chill of fear, for in spite of hi...

At the main camp on that fatal 19th of March, La Salle had left Joutel with four others—the Abbé, young Cavelier, Pierre Talon, and another young boy called Barthelemy. From tim...

On the 24th day of July, three long years before, these five weather-worn men and their comrades had seen the shores of France fade slowly from their sight. Out of the harbor of...

The summer that followed the return of La Salle to Fort St. Louis was an anxious one for the colony. Iroquois were still in the valley, and the Indians about the fort were full...

In the valley of the Mississippi it was summer again. Father Marquette, still sick, had not come back to the Illinois tribes. The Peorias and Kaskaskias, in their two villages o...

There were seventeen men who set out on foot, early in January, 1687, to travel from Fort St. Louis on the Gulf of Mexico to the other Fort St. Louis on the Illinois River—a jou...

Not a day passed but the Illinois followed with inquisitive eyes the movements of the men at the fort. They watched the great white beams by the river bank as the Frenchmen laid...

When morning came, Narrhetoba, one of the chiefs of the Sioux, appeared before the white men, asked for their calumet, filled it with his own tobacco, and smoked it in their pre...

When the Miamis had assembled in and about the open lodge of the chief, La Salle had one of the New England Indians bring into the council the presents which he wished to give....

Couture did, indeed, bring news concerning La Salle. Within the palisaded walls that crowned the rock of Fort St. Louis, the Man with the Iron Hand now listened to a story that...

Into a tree that stood beside the Falls of St. Anthony, a devout Sioux climbed, weeping and lamenting bitterly as he fastened to the branches a fine beaver skin. On the inside t...

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 th...

Couture had added the fatal sequel to the story of the Abbé and Joutel. Tonty heard it with mingled despair and rage. He thought of La Salle lying dead and unburied among the we...

From their winter camp on the river banks eighty leagues below Fort St. Louis a band of Illinois looked up, late in February of 1686, to see their friend Tonty, with twenty-five...

A little more than seven months before the Iroquois drove the Illinois tribes out of their river valley, a band of Tamaroas were paddling in wooden dugouts upon the Illinois Riv...

It was about the middle of July, 1673, when the Arkansas Indians saw the band of white men leave their village to start out upon the return voyage. The weeks that followed their...

The winter was a long one in the valley of the Illinois. Food was scarce and the little band at Fort Crèvecœur had many hungry days. Once there passed the Peoria village a canoe...

The Indians of the Peoria village were interested spectators of the events which were being acted out by the band of Frenchmen. Father Membré lived in their town and they gave h...

The summer of 1680 was an unquiet season, when every whisper of the wind seemed to bring ill news. Persistent rumors came to the Illinois of an alliance between the Iroquois and...

A sudden, far-off cry broke the stillness that had brooded over the long, low Indian lodges on the hill. Instantly the whole village awoke to intense excitement. Women dropped t...