Nature Bulletin No. 294-A   February 17, 1968
Forest Preserve District of Cook County
Richard B. Ogilvie, President
Roland F. Eisenbeis, Supt. of Conservation

****:HENRY DE TONTY

Among the greatest of the dauntless men who made possible the 
exploration J and settlement of the Mississippi Basin, there is one 
forgotten man. He was a simple sturdy soldier, blunt and laconic in his 
speech or his reports, over-shadowed by his brilliant chief -- La Salle -- 
whose trusted lieutenant, loyal friend and devoted companion he was. 
The Forest Preserve District proposes to create a lake and name it for 
Henry de Tonty, Sieur and Chevalier, Governor of Fort St. Louis in the 
Province of the Illinois -- The Man with the Iron Hand.

Lorenzo Tonty, his father, was a banker in Naples, Italy. After a bloody 
revolt in 1647, he escaped to Paris where Cardinal Mazarin, also an 
Italian, had succeeded Cardinal Richelieu as prime minister for Louis 
XIV. It was Lorenzo Tonty who suggested to Mazarin a system of life 
insurance which would replenish the royal treasury, and the name 
"tontine" for such a policy is in your dictionary. Henry, or Henri Tonti, 
was born in 1650. In 1668 he became a cadet in the French army and 
served through seven campaigns, rising to the rank of captain, 
commanding marines on warships. During a battle at Libisso, Sicily, his 
right hand was blown off by a grenade. In place of it he wore that iron 
hook so feared by the Indians as "big medicine". In 1678 he was 
engaged as LaSalle's lieutenant and they sailed for Quebec .

LaSalle, after talking with Joliet who had explored part of the 
Mississippi with Father Marquette, determined to find out if it was the 
long-sought route to China and India. In 1679, they started out in 
canoes, accompanied by three Recollects (Franciscans) -- Fathers 
Ribourdi, Membre and Hennepin -- who as LaSalle extended dominions 
of the king of France, would "bring the inhabitants to a knowledge of 
the Christian religion". From the east shore of Lake Michigan they went 
up the St. Joseph River, over into the Kankakee and, in 1680, arrived at 
Peoria where they built Fort Crevecoeur. Father Hennepin was sent to 
explore the upper Mississippi. LaSalle went back to Montreal by way of 
the Chicago Portage, and Tonty, after surveying the site for Fort St. 
Louis on Starved Rock, planned to meet him at Mackinac.

After Tonty left, Fort Crevecoeur was destroyed, Father Rihourdi was 
killed by a band of Kickapoos, Tonty narrowly escaped death from an 
Iroquois war party and, on his trip up the west side of Lake Michigan in 
midwinter, suffered incredible hardships. They ate decayed pumpkins in 
an abandoned Potawatomi village, the thongs which fastened the lodge 
poles, the skins and hoofs of a deer killed by wolves, and a buffalo-hide 
shield "which gave them bellyaches".

In 1682, LaSalle and Tonty reached the mouth of the Mississippi. 
LaSalle then returned to France to organize the expedition which finally 
landed at Matagorda Bay, Texas. After his ship was wrecked and most 
of the party had died or been killed, he was assassinated by his own 
men on a desperate overland trip to reach Tonty, Meanwhile, Tonty had 
built Fort St. Louis, rebuilt Fort Crevecoeur, and defeated the terrible 
Iroquois with a confederation of the Illinois and several other tribes. In 
1686 and 1689, with Father Membre, he made fruitless trips down the 
Mississippi to find his boss. In 1700 he was replaced as governor of 
Fort St. Louis where he had maintained the supremacy of the French for 
20 years and grimly endured neglect and injustice from his king. He 
was ordered to Biloxi, where de'Iberville had established a settlement. 
In 1704, at a new colony on the Mobile River, he nursed the sick and 
buried the dead until he, too, died of yellow fever.

There was a man.