lderness settlements, which with every generation grew more French and
less Indian. The river Mississippi was at once their friend and their
enemy. It carried their produce to New Orleans, but undermined their
rich alluvial shores, cut away fields and meadows, and swept them in its
turbid eddies thirteen hundred miles southward, as a contribution to the
mud-banks of the delta.

When the Mississippi Company came into power, the Illinois, hitherto a
dependency of Canada, was annexed to Louisiana. Pierre Dugue de
Boisbriant was sent to take command of it, and under his direction a
fort was built on the bank of the Mississippi sixteen miles above
Kaskaskia. It was named Fort Chartres, in honor of the Duc de Chartres,
son of the Regent, who had himself once borne the same title. This work,
built at first of wood and earth, was afterwards rebuilt of stone, and
became one of the chief links in the chain of military communication
between Canada and Louisiana.

Here, with the commandant at its head, sat the council of three which
ruled over the little settlement.[324] Here too was a garrison to
enforce the decrees of the council, keep order among the settlers, and
give them a protection which they greatly needed, since they were within
striking distance of the formidable Chickasaws, the effects of whose
hostility appear year after year on the parish register of deaths at
Kaskaskia. Worse things were in store; for the gallant young Pierre
d'Artaguette, who was appointed to the command in 1734, and who marched
against the Chickasaws with a band of Frenchmen and Indians, was
defeated, captured, and burned alive, astonishing his torturers by the
fortitude with which he met his fate. The settlement had other foes not
less dangerous. These were the Outagamies, or Foxes, between whom and
the tribes of the Illinois there was a deadly feud. We have seen how, in
1712, a band of Outagamies, with their allies, the Mascoutins, appeared
at Detroit and excited an alarm, which, after a savage conflict, was
ended with their ruin. In 1714 the Outagamies made a furious attack upon
the Illinois, and killed or carried off seventy-seven of them.[325] A
few years later they made another murderous onslaught in the same
quarter. They were the scourge of the West, and no white man could
travel between Canada and Louisiana except at the risk of his life.

In vain the French parleyed with them; threats and blandishments were
useless alike. Their chiefs w