his confidant as well as confessor, but he seems not to have been able to disperse the gloom which settled over the leader’s mind.  Perhaps he did not endeavor to do so.  Hopeless but still true to his trust, La Salle constructed near Peoria a fort which he named Crevecoeur, in token of his despondency and disappointment.  Leaving Tontz Main de Fer in command here with the greater part of his men, he set out with five for Frontenac, on the 2d of March, 1680, intending to return with supplies to take command again of his party, and to proceed southward.  It was at this point that the most inexplicable event of the entire enterprise occurred.  Before the party divided some one attempted to poison the Chevalier La Salle.  The poison was a subtle and slow one, similar in its effects to those used by the Borgia family; the secret of its manufacture was thought to be unknown out of Italy.  Fortunately he had taken an under or overdose of it, and the effects manifested themselves only in a long illness.  He was too far on his journey from Fort Heartbreak when stricken down to return to it, and was mercifully received and nursed back to health by the friendly Pottawottamies.

While the leader was lying sick in an Indian lodge, the knightly Tontz, ignorant of the fate of his friend, was having his troubles at the little fort of Heartbreak.  Pere Francois Xavier had remained with him, and aided him with counsels and personal exertions; he had made himself so indispensable that he was now lieutenant; if anything should happen to Tontz, he would be commander.  He was secretary of the expedition, drew careful maps, and made voluminous daily entries in a journal, which was afterward found to be a marvel of painstaking both in the facts and fictions which it contained.  Scanty mention was there of La Salle and Tontz Main de Fer, and much of Pere Francois Xavier, but it was clear, explicit, depicting the advantages of an acquisition of this territory to the crown of France in glowing terms, and strongly advising that the man who had most distinguished himself in the difficulties of its discovery should be appointed as governor, or baron, under the royal authority.

While Father Xavier was compiling this remarkable piece of authorship, the Iroquois descended in warlike array upon the somewhat friendly disposed Illinois Indians, in whose midst Fort Crevecoeur had been built.  The suspicious Indian mind immediately connected the advent of their enemies with the building of the fort, and regarded the little garrison with distrust.  Tontz, at the instance of Father Xavier, presented himself to their chief, and offered to do anything in his power to prove his friendly intentions.  The chief accepted his services, and sent him as ambassador to inquire into the cause of the coming of the Iroquois.  This mission had nearly been his last, for Tontz was received with stabs, and hardly allowed to give the message of the chief.  His ill-treatment at the hands of their enemies did not reassure the suspicious Illinois, who ordered Tontz to immediately evacuate the fort and return with his forces to the country whence he had come.  In his wounded condition such a journey was extremely hazardous, and it must have been with grave doubts as to his surviving it that Father Xavier took temporary command of the returning expedition.